New Jersey’s Millionaire Tax

I suggested on Saturday that tax-induced migration of rich people “is real, but limited, and the further you get from New Jersey the less real it becomes.” Via a strangely irate Robert Waldmann I learn that there’s a new attempt to empirically estimate this effect from Cristobal Young and Charles Varner in the National Tax Journal. Their conclusion in “Millionaire Migration and State Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence From a Natural Experiment” is that when New Jersey imposed a millionaire tax under Jon Corzine this prompted little additional out-migration except among retirees and people who primarily earn their income from investments.