Thursday, October 1, 2026
With a projected multi-billion-dollar deficit, New York’s budget continues to sink deeper into a sea of red ink. Also drowning are taxpayers, who, most recently, rather than getting second jobs to stay afloat, are moving out of New York state.
New York has had the biggest out-of-state migration in the country. The New York Post reported on an alarming new study by the Empire Center for New York State Policy that clearly spelled out the backlash from high state income and property taxes. What was the result? Mass exodus. Residents leaving New York in droves, taking with them a huge chunk of tax revenue.
Between 2000 and 2008, close to 1.5 million people left New York. Those departures directly correlate to our growing budget deficit. In fact, in 2006 alone the state lost more than $4.3 billion in taxpayer revenue.
We have not been able to close the gap because the wealthy, who generate high tax revenues, are choosing to live out of state. Apparently, the rumors about New York’s tax policies are spreading, because these people are not being replaced with other high-income earners.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Departing families have income levels 13% higher than those moving in, while in New York County the differential was even more severe. Those moving elsewhere had an average income of $93,264, some 28% higher than the $72,726 earned by those coming in.”
Is it really a surprise that people no longer find New York an attractive place to live?
Our Legislature has only been adding fuel to the fire. Once again, rather than passing sensible budget cuts that may ease tax burdens and keep fleeing taxpayers in the state, the Legislature proposed yet another new tax, the “millionaires tax.” It would comprise a surcharge on those earning more than $200,000 a year -- which for many is the basic cost of living in Nassau County.
Earlier this year, supporters of the millionaires tax estimated that it had the potential to raise $6 billion in annual revenue. If you recall, I anticipated the shortcomings of such a tax and predicted that it could never reach the revenue levels that state legislators expected.
Like others, I saw only an exodus of business and capital from our state. Well I hate to say it, but I told you so. These onerous tax rates are forcing people out, and they can’t run fast enough.
In the current fiscal year, half of the expected tax revenue from New York’s 100 richest taxpayers -- estimated at more than $1 billion -- is missing. One high-profile businessman, billionaire Tom Golisano, a three-time candidate for governor and the owner of the Buffalo Sabers, was forced to leave New York due to high income tax rates. Golisano was paying $13,000 a day in income taxes. Paychex, his Rochester-based payroll processing business, created 5,000 jobs. Fed up with the taxes, Golisano relocated his family to Florida, a move he estimates will save him $5 million a year.
Donald Trump told Fox News that several of his millionaire friends were also thinking of abandoning New York. Is this what New York wants? Respectable business people forced out of state, possibly with their successful business and jobs?
The time to act is now, before there’s no one left and we have to declare bankruptcy. Make no mistake about it: New York’s budget woes are a direct result of our courtship of special interest groups -- the teachers’, civil service and health care workers’ unions -- and out-of-control, wasteful spending.
Many of our politicians think that the only way to make up for the loss of tax revenue is to increase taxes. Let me propose, instead, that they develop the courage to stand up to special interests, cut down on fraud and abuse in Medicaid, decrease bureaucracy, reform the pension system, and show taxpayers that they are more interested in protecting taxpayers’ needs than they are in getting re-elected.
