Map: Rhode Island posts 63% jump in upper-income taxpayers
June 7th, 2012 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
This is interesting, and perhaps surprising: The Tax Foundation reports Rhode Island posted the 18th-fastest growth in high-income taxpayers between 1999 and 2009.
While the total number of Rhode Island taxpayers grew by just 4% during that period, the number with adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 jumped 63%, for a net gain of 58.9% at the top end, the biggest in New England. Nationally, the growth rates ranged from 137% in North Dakota to 18% in last-place Michigan.
“The $200,000 threshold is in nominal dollars, so all states will have had considerable growth, but the differences between the states demonstrate that certain states have had much stronger increases in wealthy taxpayers than others,” The Tax Foundation’s Nick Kasprak writes. Take a look:
Tags: economy, incomes, maps, tax foundation, taxes
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
Vindication once again. The “flight of the earls” myth that was used as a justification to cut taxes on the elite in the middle part of the last decade is, once again, shown to be untrue. By the way, groups like the Economic Progress Institute and the labor movement said so at the time.
Start tax them at higher rates and you will find the “trend” will reverse big time. Just because they use address’s here does not mean they live here.
[...] you that the so-called “job creator” class is fleeing the state to avoid paying taxes, it turns out the opposite is true with the population of people who earn more than $200,000 grew by almost 60 percent between 1999 [...]
I wonder how many of these are firefighter or police retirees with cola boosting pensions?
Numbers can be fudged this story is crap.
Ted,
Two questions:
How many of these employees were RI public sector employees?
How many were employees commuting across the state line to Mass and Ct.?
My guess is that the largest percentage of this growth was not as a result of private sector job creation here in RI.
Knowing where these jobs are is a huge part of the puzzle since workers commuting to Mass or Ct. can easily pick up and leave if we tax them too much.
We’ve already done damage by taking away the ability to write off itemized deductions. This is a big deal for high earners and one more reason not to come to RI.
Whether you believe in the “flight of the earls” or not (and I tend to NOT believe it–people with extra income can afford to live here, it’s the middle class who is leaving), this data by itself doesn’t prove if the “flight” theory is false b/c the data covers a time period before and after RI cut the capital gains tax and enacted the flat tax (around 2006), which were aimed at keeping/attracting high earners. It’s just as possible that the “earls” were “flying” until the 2006 reforms and then we saw an influx. We’d have to see yearly data to more accurately determine causation/correlation. This point has been made before: http://www.anchorrising.com/barnacles/011973.html
I am in agreement with Gary M. It is no secret we have lost thousands of jobs since the economic downturn. Many upper income wage earners make the commute to Massachusetts daily. Ted, do you have research that shows this? My guess is the Department of Taxation may have it as these individuals also file tax returns in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Also, I assume this includes joint returns? So it is not necessarily a person earning over $200K, but 2 earners making a total of $200K or above. Not so hard to do in the Northeast, and GaryM hit it on the head with people crossing the border into MA where there are more high paying jobs and their unemployment rate is 4% lower than RI.
$200k was more in 1999 that it was in 2009, about 25% more.
FWIW, and keeping in mind all of the above caveats, I took a deeper look @ http://www.anchorrising.com/barnacles/014434.html
#1 North Dakoda income tax = 3.99% of amount over $379,150. RI start taxing these people and they will move out.