George Worrell writes for the New York Post about bad news for the Big Apple’s economy.
New York has lost 10 billionaires in the last four years — three of whom fled to Florida — leaving tax coffers lighter by tens of millions of dollars annually.
This year 62 New York-based billionaires appeared on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, compared to 72 in 2019 and 65 last year.
Investor and Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris, whose net worth was valued at $5.7 billion last year, has grown his fortune to $6.9 billion — but he packed his bags for Florida.
Other billionaires who have relocated from Gotham to the Sunshine State in the last four years include hedge funder Daniel Och — whose net worth now stands at $3.6 billion — and investor Carl Icahn, who’s worth $6.9 billion.
“You have this incredibly high rate imposed on all of the income of the highest earners [in New York], and living just about anywhere else will substantially reduce your tax burden. Going to Florida will obviously eliminate your individual tax burden, and many of these billionaires clearly have that flexibility,” the National Tax Foundation’s vice president, Jared Walczak, explained.
New York relies on the top 1% of taxpayers to pay for 42% of its tax receipts, and billionaires’ incomes are taxed at the state’s highest rate — a staggering 14.8%, according to Walczak.
Although it’s impossible to quantify the exact loss in state taxes from billionaires’ fleeing without access to private income documents, “If you had someone who was earning $100 million [a year] in New York suddenly move to Florida, that’s something like a $11 million-a-year hit per year recurring to the state,” said Ken Girardin, the research director for the Albany-based think tank, Empire Center for Public Policy.
“And that’s just from one person leaving,” Girardin pointed out.
