Since 2018, around 102,600 millionaires have left California. In the same period, 61,400 Americans with at least seven figures to their name have packed up and left New York state. Where have they gone? According to the Wealth Exodus dashboard, Florida has added 133,000 millionaires over those years, and Texas has added 61,400.
Using data compiled from the IRS, the Federal Reserve, and state tax records, this dashboard visualizes the migration of American millionaires between states.
Politically explosive numbers
The numbers are politically explosive because they are neither random nor subtle. The map shows the moneyed classes moving from predominantly Democratic-run states to Republican ones. Put another way: from states with typically higher taxes and more regulations to states with generally lower taxes and fewer regulations.
It’s not a trivial trickle. From 2020 to 2024, Americans collectively worth around $500 billion changed their state of residence. The top three states they moved from were California, New York, and Illinois. The largest inflows went to Florida, Texas, and Nevada.
Zoom out, and a nationwide pattern of millionaire migration becomes apparent. Rich people are leaving the Midwest and Northeast (except Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine), the Pacific coast (minus Washington), the Mississippi basin (i.e., Louisiana and Mississippi), the non-contiguous states (Alaska and Hawaii), and New Mexico.
Wealthy folks are not just flocking to Florida. Pretty much every other state has seen an increase in the number of millionaires since 2018 (even if it’s as few as 500 in Nebraska). Three states are breaking even, millionaire-wise: Kansas, Missouri, and North Dakota.
A marginal tax rate of around 50%
Why is California in particular bleeding millionaires? Well, it does have the nation’s highest marginal income tax rate, at 13.3%. California has lower rates on lower income brackets, but that is the rate you pay on the state’s highest income bracket, which starts at $1 million (for single filers). Hawaii has the nation’s second-highest marginal income tax rate (11%) on income above $325,000 (single filers). New York, the state with the third-highest marginal income tax, charges 10.9% on any earnings above $25 million.
Combined with other state and federal taxes, California’s marginal tax rate is around 50%. As rich people are (obviously) more mobile than poorer ones, many have chosen to avoid these high taxes by moving to states with lower rates.
That is fiscally counterproductive for California: According to IRS data, high-earning households leaving the state took more than $16 billion in annual income with them in 2022 alone. Over the five-year period ending in 2022, that out-migration of high-earning individuals cost an estimated $5.3 billion in personal income tax, and the trend persists. At least some of that money would have stayed in California if those high earners had been taxed at lower rates or differently.
But how low is low enough? If Florida is the most popular destination, it’s not just because of the weather. The Sunshine State is one of nine without a state income tax. (If you’re curious, the others are Alaska, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming). Those states typically make up for it by charging higher sales or property taxes. Still, zero income tax makes quite a difference if you’re a high earner.
Say you’re a successful entrepreneur earning $5 million a year. Simply by moving from California to Florida, you save around $665,000 per year in state income taxes. That increases to approximately $740,000 if you move down from New York City, which, in addition to state and federal income taxes, also charges hefty city income taxes.
Simple logic suggests this is an inherently unstable situation. With disparities this large, there will be a race to the bottom or, rather, two races: one of millionaires moving to lower-tax states and another of states lowering taxes to retain and, if possible, attract enough wealthy citizens to keep their coffers filled, if not by charging (increasingly lower) income taxes, then by a value-added tax (VAT) and other non-income-related taxes.
An ongoing referendum on taxation
If you get the sense that this map is approaching the income tax issue in a rather one-sided way, you are on to something. As with any map, it’s worth considering who made this one, and why. In this case, it’s CitizenX, a Switzerland-based company that specializes in procuring foreign citizenship by investment.
From its perspective, high-net-worth individuals who “vote with their feet” are not an indication of a broken system but of a healthy impulse; wealth is something to be admired as a measure of success, not taxed and shared with society at large.
Within that political narrative, fiscally motivated migration is simply an ongoing referendum on taxation. In the three decades since 1990, about 13 million Americans moved out of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. A similar amount moved into Arizona, Florida, Nevada, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
And it’s not just a vote of no confidence at the national level. CitizenX’s target audience consists of wealthy individuals who can afford its services to obtain citizenship in another country and keep their tax bills as low as possible.
Potential destinations are several Caribbean nations (Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts & Nevis, and Saint Lucia), two Pacific ones (Nauru and Vanuatu), and a few others (El Salvador, São Tomé & Príncipe, and Turkey). These countries offer citizenship-by-investment through donations to the government or the purchase of real estate. Until 2025, Malta also offered a so-called “Golden Passport,” but that popular shortcut into the EU was closed after the European Court of Justice ruled against the sale of citizenship. Several EU countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece) do, however, still offer residency-by-investment (Golden Visas), with full naturalization still requiring a longer, non-transactional pathway.
However, while the map visualizes a real phenomenon — wealthy people are moving from high-tax to low-tax states in significant numbers — it does not tell the entire story. It does not show the social capital those high-tax states have created: the schools and hospitals, the academic and cultural institutions, which, to a certain extent, explain why all that wealth was created there in the first place.
What is most interesting about a map is not the data it presents, but the story it chooses to tell. Perhaps what the Wealth Exodus map illustrates is not so much the blight of high taxation and the benefit of its opposite, as the widening rift in the U.S. — a sorting of the country by political and cultural values. In the end, what this map reveals above all else is the mapmaker’s political convictions. And, perhaps, those of the map reader, too.
Strange Maps #1292
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This article Follow the money: Mapping millionaire migration across America is featured on Big Think.
