New York has lost nearly $10 billion in taxable income to outmigration — and now the governor who once told the rich to leave is begging them to come back.
Story Snapshot
- Internal Revenue Service data shows New York lost a net 74,482 tax returns between 2022 and 2023, taking roughly $9.9 billion in adjusted gross income with them.
- Over a decade, from 2019 to 2023, New York shed about $111 billion in net income while Florida gained nearly $196 billion.
- Florida now has more resident millionaires than New York — 77,760 versus 69,780 — a stunning reversal for a state once seen as the financial capital of the world.
- Governor Kathy Hochul, who once told wealthy New Yorkers to “jump on a bus” and leave, admitted in March 2026 that the state’s “tax base has been eroded.”
The Numbers New York Can’t Hide
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) migration data tells a painful story for New York. The state lost a net 74,482 tax-filing households between 2022 and 2023 alone. That exodus carried nearly $10 billion in taxable income out the door with it. These are not small numbers. They represent real families, real businesses, and real tax dollars that New York no longer collects.
Zoom out over ten years and the picture gets worse. From 2019 to 2023, New York lost roughly $111 billion in net income to other states. Florida absorbed much of that wealth, gaining about $196 billion over the same stretch. The shift has been so dramatic that Florida now counts more resident millionaires than New York does — 77,760 compared to New York’s 69,780. That is a stunning fall for a state that once defined American wealth.
Hochul’s Stunning Reversal
Perhaps no moment captures the failure of New York’s tax policies better than Governor Hochul’s own words. She once mocked wealthy residents, suggesting they “jump on a bus” if they didn’t like the state’s tax burden. By March 2026, she was standing before a Politico summit admitting that New York’s “tax base has been eroded.” That is not a talking point from a critic — it is a confession from the person running the state.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has taken the opposite approach, calling the wealthy exodus an “imagined problem” while pushing for new taxes on the city’s remaining high earners. That disconnect between what the data shows and what city leaders say is exactly why so many New Yorkers — and so many businesses — have stopped trusting local government. When leaders deny a problem exists while the evidence piles up, residents vote with their feet.
A Warning for the Rest of the Country
New York’s experience is not just a local problem — it is a warning. High earners pay a massive share of state income taxes. When they leave, the tax base shrinks and everyone else pays more or gets less. New York’s top rate now sits at 10.9%, one of the highest in the nation. Meanwhile, Florida charges no state income tax at all. The math is not complicated, and millions of Americans have already done it.
Some researchers argue that wealthy people don’t actually move because of taxes, pointing to studies showing top earners leave at lower rates than middle-class residents. That may be true in normal times. But the IRS numbers show billions in income leaving New York year after year, and Florida’s millionaire count just passed New York’s. At some point, the data speaks louder than the studies. New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is now pushing an additional millionaire tax on top of existing rates. If the goal is to keep wealthy taxpayers in the state, this is exactly the wrong direction. New York has run this experiment. The results are in.
Sources:
timesunion.com, fiscalpolicy.org, youtube.com, cnbc.com, prospect.org
