Gasp! People Actually Move to Low-Tax States!

File this article under "Like we said …" The Kansas City Star had an article last week about the fact that people really do move from high-tax states to low-tax states. The point of the article is more "How to do it and avoid an audit," but here at the Show-Me Institute we have already pointed out the benefits of repealing Missouri’s income tax. In fact, this story uses the same expert we did:

It isn’t clear how many people move exclusively or mainly for tax reasons. But from April 2000 through June 2006, there was a net migration of 2.3 million people moving from states with income taxes to states with no income taxes, an average of more than 1,000 people moving per day, says Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, based on an analysis of census data.

If Missouri were to enact some combination of long-term spending restraint and sales-tax increases, we could eliminate the income tax in our state without major cuts to government services. Combine the absence of a state income tax with our very affordable housing markets (see p. 31), and Missouri could truly become a magnet for Americans looking to move.

But why would we want that? We wouldn’t even know where all these new people went to high school …