The 2017 Republican tax law’s $10,000 cap on the deductibility of state and local taxes did not lead taxpayers in high-tax states to flee en masse to states without an income tax, such as Florida and Texas, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of IRS data.
Bloomberg’s Jonathan Levin reports that that tax overhaul “had a negligible initial impact on the nation’s domestic migration patterns” and there was no SALT cap bump for Florida, Texas or Washington, which also has no income tax:
“In the first year after the cap was put in place, zero-wage-tax states netted about $1.24 in new earnings from migrants for every $100 already earned there -- slightly less than the net migration rates in the previous three years. Florida, the top destination among zero-tax states, netted $2.65, also a drop from the previous years’ rates. …
“The net migration rate remained negative in high-tax states including New York, New Jersey and California. But as with the states at the opposite end of the tax spectrum, there was no observable shift in trend. In fact, New York’s negative net migration rate got slightly less negative.”
