The Context:
Last year, state Senator Don Harmon and state
Representative Naomi Jakobsson introduced identical resolutions in the General
Assembly to amend the income tax provisions of the 1970 Illinois State
Constitution.1 The purpose of the proposed amendment is to eliminate
the requirement that the state’s personal income tax be imposed at one, flat
rate.
Both proposals have been attacked on the grounds that imposing
higher rates on higher levels of income — and particularly on income above $1
million — is unfair because it somehow punishes success and ultimately will
drive millionaires out of the state causing economic harm. As it turns out,
however, the overwhelming body of evidence show that these attacks have no
merit.
This venerable principle goes back to 1776 and Adam Smith, the
father of capitalism. In his seminal work, the Wealth of Nations, Smith posited that a fair tax in a capitalist
economy should “remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving
the poor and burdening the rich.”2
To be Fair, Income Tax Rates Must
Vary in Accordance with Ability to Pay:
Both all the data — as well as best fiscal policy practices —
dispel any argument that having lower rates apply to lower levels of income and
higher rates to higher levels of income unfairly punishes success. Start with
best fiscal practices. Far from punishing success, an income tax structure that
assigns lower rates to lower levels of income and higher rates to higher levels
of income is the only way to respond fairly to how income growth is actually
shared among different income classes.
Smith contended that [it] would be fair taxation in a capitalist
economy because affluent folks would receive a disproportionate share of income
growth over time. A recent analysis of IRS data shows Smith was right. Over the
1979-2011 sequence, after adjusting for inflation, the wealthiest 10 percent in
America realized 139.8 percent of national income growth—or more than all of
it. That means fully 90 percent of all Americans on average earned 39.8 percent
less in real terms in 2011 than in 1979.
So, to treat taxpayers fairly, Illinois needs the flexibility to
tax lower levels of income at lower rates than higher levels of
income—something the state Constitution prohibits. This makes Illinois a tax
outlier. Thirty-three of the 41 states in America with an income tax have a fair,
graduated rate structure.3 Illinois doesn’t.
According to a national study, that’s a primary reason Illinois
ranks as one of the three most unfair taxing states in the country—imposing tax
burdens (as a percentage of income) on low and middle income families that are
more than double that of millionaires.4
A Fair, Graduated Income Tax will
not Drive Millionaires out of Illinois:
Research on the migration of people generally and
high-income households specifically finds there is no statistically significant
correlation between a state’s tax policies and the propensity for a family to
migrate.5 Indeed, other factors like proximity to family or a job,
housing prices and even weather are what really matter. Following is a short
summary of the research in this area.
The New Jersey Experience:
Forty-one states in America have a personal
income tax. New Jersey is one of the 33 states with a personal income tax that
has a fair, graduated rate structure. In 2004, New Jersey increased its top income
tax rate from 6.37 percent to 8.97 percent. This new top rate only applied to
taxable income above $500,000. In 2010, Stanford University issued a study that
analyzed whether this change in New Jersey’s tax policy, dubbed a
“millionaire’s tax,” encouraged millionaires to leave the state. New Jersey is
located close to other states like New York and Connecticut, and cities like
Philadelphia, so that migration out of state to avoid the New Jersey
“millionaires tax” was feasible, given that the individuals moving would be
able to retain their jobs and stay close to their families. But despite this,
the number of in-state millionaires continued to grow after the state’s
“millionaire’s tax” passed.6 This outcome should not be surprising
given that, the researchers found that people overall do not generally migrate
in response to a tax increase. In fact, research on the number of millionaire households per state demonstrates little correlation between state income taxes and millionaire location. A study done in 2013 by Phoenix Marketing International, a wealth research firm, ranked U.S. states by millionaires per capita. The firm defined millionaire households as those with $1 million or more in investable assets. What Phoenix Marketing found was “being ranked at the top of the millionaire-ratio list is as much a function of geography as policy.”7 As shown in Figure 1, the top five states include a high income tax state (Hawaii) and a no income tax state (Alaska) as well as three states with fair graduated income tax rate structures (Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut) with higher rates assessed against higher levels of income.
Figure 1
Millionaire Households per Capita
2013
Source: Phoenix Marketing International, Ranking of U.S. States by Millionaires per
Capita 2006-2013 (2014) http://w3.phoenixmi.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Phoenix-GWM-U.S.-Ranking-States-By-Millioinaires-Per-Capita-2006-13.pdf
Rank
|
State
|
Total
Households
|
$1M+ in
Investable Assets
|
Ratio
Millionaires to Total Households
|
1
|
Maryland
|
2,199,912
|
169,287
|
7.70%
|
2
|
New Jersey
|
3,238,448
|
242,647
|
7.49%
|
3
|
Connecticut
|
1,376,955
|
100,754
|
7.32%
|
4
|
Hawaii
|
466,705
|
33,520
|
7.18%
|
5
|
Alaska
|
269,890
|
18,209
|
6.75%
|
Most
Residents including Millionaires Do Not Migrate out of a State for Tax Reasons:
Based on the findings of most research in this area, people move
for many complicated, interrelated reasons.
·
Moreover, ample evidence shows
that even after taxes are increased, people generally do not leave their homes
states. One study by the PEW Research Center which surveyed American households
confirmed that family ties are a major reason people do not leave their
hometowns. Other top reasons cited were a sense of belonging, connection to
friends, and having a good place to raise children.9
According to a recent
survey conducted by Endeavor Global, those rationales for staying in a state
after taxes go up actually track what successful entrepreneurs look for
when starting a business. The Endeavor Global survey found that low tax rates
were rarely cited as a factor in entrepreneurial site-selection decision
making.10 Instead, the entrepreneurs surveyed responded that the
most important factors to them in choosing a site were, first and foremost,
access to a talented local employee pool, and second, proximity to customers
and suppliers.11
Most People Don’t
Change State of Residency:
The bottom line is migration is
just not that common. “On average, only 1.7 percent of U.S. residents moved
from one state to another per year from 2001-2010, and only about 30 percent of
those born in the U.S. change their state of residence over the course of their entire lifetime.”12
Furthermore, many studies have shown that a vast majority of individuals are
drawn to states that have strong public services, which are paid for by tax
dollars.13 One study in particular, released by the Center on Budget
and Policy Priorities, found that “amenities such as cultural facilities,
recreational opportunities and well managed public services” 14
attract potential new residents. Well-funded public education matters as well.15
This suggests, of course, that simply having a fair income tax with higher
rates on higher levels of income and lower rates with lower levels of income
will not drive migration out of a state.
The following quotation from the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities fairly and accurately sums what the evidence has to say about the
myths of tax flight: “It would not be credible to argue that no one ever moves
to a new state because of the desire to live someplace where taxes are lower.
But neither is it credible to say that taxes are a primary motivation, nor that
migration has a large impact on the revenue impact of tax measures.”16
Currently, Illinois tax policy is neither fair to taxpayers nor designed to
sustain funding current service levels into the future. Reforming the state’s
personal income tax to a fair, graduated structure with higher rates for higher
levels of income and lower rates for lower levels of income will not drive away
millionaires, nor punish success.
For more
information, contact the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability: Ralph
Martire, Executive Director, (312) 332-1481 or rmartire@ctbaonline.org; Jennifer
Lozano, Research Associate, (312) 332-1348 or jlozano@ctbaonline.org
1 SJRCA40
and HJRCA33 of the 98th General Assembly.
2 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (London: W. Strahan
and T. Cadell: 1776), Book 5, Chap. 2, Article I, footnote 4.
3 Federation of Tax
Administrators, State Individual Income
Taxes (Tax rates for Tax Year 2014—as of January 2014) (Washington, DC:
January 1, 2014).
4 Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy, Who Pays? A Distribution
Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, Fourth Edition (Washington,
DC: January 2013), 35. The only state with a higher state and local tax burden
on the lowest 20% of families is Washington, which does not have a state
personal income tax.
5 Cristobal Young and Charles
Varner, Millionaire Migration and State
Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment (Stanford, CA;
June 2011) 257.
6 Cristobal Young and Charles
Varner, Millionaire Migration and State
Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment (Stanford, CA;
June 2011) 265.
7 Thomas Frank, Top States for Millionaire per Capita, (CNBC.com: January 19, 2014).
8 Jeffrey
Thompson, The Impact of Taxes on
Migration in New England, (Policy Economy Research Institute: University of
Massachusetts, Amherst: April 2011), 5. While the study focuses on New England
the paper also includes national comparisons.
9 Pew Research Center, American Mobility: Who Moves? Who Stays Put?
Where’s Home? (December 28, 2008).
10 Rhett Morris, What Do the Best Entrepreneurs Want in a
City? Lessons from the Founders of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies (Endeavor,
February 2014).
11 Rhett Morris, What Do the Best Entrepreneurs Want in a
City? Lessons from the Founders of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies (Endeavor,
February 2014).
12 Robert Tannenwald, Jon Shure,
and Nicholas Johnson, Tax Flight is a
Myth: Higher State Taxes bring more Revenue, not more Migration (Washington,
DC: August 4, 2011), 1.
13 Robert Tannenwald, Jon Shure,
and Nicholas Johnson, Tax Flight is a
Myth: Higher State Taxes bring more Revenue, not more Migration (Washington,
DC: August 4, 2011), 2.
14 Robert Tannenwald, Jon Shure,
and Nicholas Johnson, Tax Flight is a
Myth: Higher State Taxes bring more Revenue, not more Migration (Washington,
DC: August 4, 2011), 6.
15 Noah Berger and Peter Fisher, A Well-Educated Workforce is Key to State
Prosperity (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, August 22, 2013), http://www.epi.org/publication/states-education-productivity-growth-foundations/; Michelle T. Bensi, David C.
Black, and Michael R. Dowd. “The Education/Growth Relationship: Evidence from
Real State Panel Data.” Contemporary
Economic Policy 22, no. 2 (April 22, 2004): 281-298; Jeffrey Thompson, Prioritizing Approaches to Economic
Development in New England: Skills, Infrastructure, and Tax Incentives (Amherst,
MA: University of Massachusetts Amherst, Political Economy Research Institute,
August 18, 2010); Michael Mazerov, Cutting
Personal Income Taxes Won’t Help Small Businesses Create Jobs and May Harm
State Economies (Washington, DC: February 19, 2013), 1.
16 Robert Tannenwald, Jon Shure,
and Nicholas Johnson, Tax Flight is a
Myth: Higher State Taxes bring more Revenue, not more Migration (Washington,
DC: August 4, 2011), 3.
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