Millennials Are Fleeing Tax Heavy States

I don’t think anyone ever said “tax them and they will come” because more often than not its the opposite.

A recent Fox News report shows that to be the case in states like New York, California, and now my once-upon-a-time liveable home of Virginia.

According to the report, “millennials were defined as those younger than 35 with a gross annual income of $100,000 or more. The data was compiled by deducting the number of affluent millennials leaving the state from the number of those moving in, which resulted in almost 5,000 for the year reviewed [from New York state alone].”

This was information provided by the IRS from 2015 onward, so this definitely isn’t a recent trend, its a longterm sign of an economic red alert for states where the cost of living alone is becoming difficult for economic mobility.

Reasons for the mass exodus include income taxes, business regulations, costs of living, and more burdensome financial levies. Because of this, the report states that many of these wealthy millennials are going to states like Texas, Washington, Colorado, and Florida, where the state income taxes are low to non-existent and the opportunity to start a business and create jobs is alive and thriving.

This is a good marketing moment for red states or states like Colorado and Washington which are blue but have a deep libertarian streak within their state legislatures. The report made it clear that “Overall, the Northeast was not a location well-to-do millennials wanted to live…”

This isn’t just a trend for the wealthy, this is something that is going on within the mobile middle class as well, especially for retirees.

The classic joke that grandma “retired in Florida for the sun and stayed for the price” is true for a reason since the absence of an income tax in states like Florida and Texas show that if people can keep their money, they’ll attempt to do so.

Millennials are already the most indebted generation in American history.

Student loans aside, federal debts, inbound pensions crisis, and other boondoggles are making it clear that the cost of the American dream is steep and accruing interest by the millisecond.

These blue, tax-heavy states need to get spending under control and lower tax burdens, but that is easier said than done.

Maybe the only way they’ll realize they need to make a change is when they are jobless, penniless, and otherwise alone in the ruins of once prosperous economies, but like most lessons, they might only learn them when they begin to feel the pinch themselves.