Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich

My friend moved to Texas and I bet really enjoys not paying 9%+ of his income to the state. Anyone else recently move from NJ or elsewhere to a low tax state? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html

“Here’s the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.”… “Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.” …“Or consider the fiasco of New Jersey. In the early 1960s, the state had no state income tax and no state sales tax. It was a rapidly growing state attracting people from everywhere and running budget surpluses. Today its income and sales taxes are among the highest in the nation yet it suffers from perpetual deficits and its schools rank among the worst in the nation”… "One last point: States aren’t simply competing with each other. As Texas Gov. Rick Perry recently told us, “Our state is competing with Germany, France, Japan and China for business. We’d better have a pro-growth tax system or those American jobs will be out-sourced. Gov. Perry and Texas have the jobs and prosperity model exactly right. Texas created more new jobs in 2008 than all other 49 states combined. And Texas is the only state other than Georgia and North Dakota that is cutting taxes this year.”

ive always wondered, as Delaware is a no tax state or something like that for companies, it obviously has a lot of massive corporations headquartered there. Is it a very rich state with lots of wealthy execs? By the way what are the big cities in delaware ? I know nothing about this state. All my knowledge of america is based on what i see in the hills!

Correlation is not causation. Just because people are leaving higher tax states, does not mean they are leaving them because of taxes.

I personally doubt that Texas is gonna keepin on creating jobs in the oil sector or finance sector, but hey, it might still be better off than those states with high deficits and the need to plunder the pockets of those left with something. If it would be that simple to just move out of those high tax states is that the quality of life in general comes at a cost. It may well be that the quality of schools in NJ is poor, but that doesn’t mean that that applies to all cities where you have higher taxes than in Florida or Texas. Please correct me if I am wrong, but don’t FLA and TX also have relatively high crime rates? How good are schools down there? Much better than the average U.S. school (which doesn’t mean much, to begin with).

I am in Texas and not here for the taxes yet they are a plus. My job is located here.

“If it would be that simple to just move out of those high tax states is that the quality of life in general comes at a cost. It may well be that the quality of schools in NJ is poor, but that doesn’t mean that that applies to all cities where you have higher taxes than in Florida or Texas. Please correct me if I am wrong, but don’t FLA and TX also have relatively high crime rates? How good are schools down there? Much better than the average U.S. school (which doesn’t mean much, to begin with).” FLA and TX have high crime rates since it is the SOUTH and they are Border States. Texas (mexico) Florida (cuba & haiti)

if I my office is in NYC and I am living in CT/NJ, then which state am I liable for?

As for the economy in Texas, I believe the overall sentiment is neutral to even slightly positive – sure, a lot of the finance, real estate, and consumer-type businesses are going through a hard time, but there also wasn’t an unrealistic level of exuberance in Texas during the boom times, which is probably the reason why things don’t seem as bad down here. There’s also a lot of energy businesses down here, which helped act as an economic hedge when the financial institutions were blowing up. Plus, we hear about all the stuff that goes on in other places like New York or even real estate bubble areas like Florida and SoCal. There is a saying that goes something like “the bigger you are, the harder you fall.” Well, there is still a “fall” down in Texas, but it just doesn’t feel as bad here because Texas didn’t see a huge upswing in its economy the way that the other bubble markets did in 2004-2007.

yeah, I think it would suck to live in NY, high cost of living, high taxes, (city tax), housing, and now there are no jobs. have fun. If any of you started a business where would you want to operate out of?