As a tax reform bill inches its way through Congress, some of its provisions may have wealthy residents of high tax states considering a move. In states like Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, home to many high earning hedge funders, the state budgets themselves may be under threat if wealthy residents decide to bolt for lower taxes locales. Bloomberg reports:
The problem for the Connecticut hedge-fund set — and, more broadly, for a lot of the Wall Street crowd — is that Republican proposals in both the House and Senate would drive up taxes for many high-earners in the New York City area. By eliminating the deduction for most state and local taxes, an individual making a yearly salary of $1,000,000 — a figure not uncommon in the financial industry — would owe the Internal Revenue Service an additional $21,000, according to a preliminary analysis by accounting firm Marcum LLP.
Billionaire hedge fund managers have blazed the trail south in recent years. David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones and Eddie Lampert are New York-area transplants to Florida, which has no personal income tax.
A final bill could still do away with the hike, but so far there are no signs coming out of Washington that will happen. Financially struggling New Jersey had the sixth-highest individual income rate this year, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators. New York ranked eighth and cash-strapped Connecticut 12th. Nine of the 10 states with the highest individual taxes, including Washington, D.C., voted Democratic in the 2016 presidential election….
State budgets feel the impact. When Tepper moved his firm to Florida, forecasters warned it could jeopardize New Jersey’s budget because the firm generated more than $100 million in state income tax. In 2013, state income tax generated by residents of seven of the wealthiest towns in Fairfield County amounted to $1.8 billion, according to the Hartford Courant, or about 9 percent of the Connecticut state budget.
“There is a certain amount of burying one’s head in the sand and naivete in Hartford,” Connecticut’s capital, McGuire said. “I don’t think they believe it can happen.”
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