By:  Benyamin Davidsons

New York’s tax coffers are tens of millions lighter yearly due to the exit of 10 billionaires over the last four years. As reported by the NY Post, three of those billionaires headed South to Florida, where there is no personal income tax and where the laws are more pro-business.

This year’s Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, showed that there are just 62 billionaires based in New York—compared to 65 last year, and compared to 72 billionaires in NY in 2019.  Among those who fled to Florida is Josh Harris, investor and co-founder of Apollo Global Management, whose net worth was valued at $5.7 billion last year.  Incidentally, this year his fortune has grown to $6.9 billion.  The other two include:  hedge funder Daniel Och — whose net worth now stands at $3.6 billion, and who moved to Miami Beach in late 2019; and Carl Icahn, one of Wall Street’s most successful investors, who boasts a net worth of $6.9 billion, and who moved to Sunny Isles Beach in 2020.

“You have this incredibly high rate imposed on all of the income of the highest earners [in New York], and living just about anywhere else will substantially reduce your tax burden. Going to Florida will obviously eliminate your individual tax burden, and many of these billionaires clearly have that flexibility,” noted the National Tax Foundation’s vice president, Jared Walczak.

Per the Post, New York relies on its top 1 percent of taxpayers to pay a whopping 42 percent of its tax receipts.  The NY billionaires’ incomes are taxed at the top bracket— which is at an astounding 14.8%, per Walczak.  It’s not plausible to put an exact number on the loss for the state from the billionaires’ exits, because some income documents are private, but experts assure us that NY is taking a substantial loss. “If you had someone who was earning $100 million [a year] in New York suddenly move to Florida, that’s something like a $11 million-a-year hit per year recurring to the state,” said Ken Girardin, the research director for Empire Center for Public Policy.

“And that’s just from one person leaving.” Girardin added that NY will have a hard time finding other means of income to offset the loss, and will be hard pressed to keep up services. “New York’s reliance on high earners to fund government services means if those high earners stop being created or start moving away, the state’s ability to fund services can be quickly reduced,” said Girardin.  “The state’s ability to continually bail out the MTA and to fund New York’s costly public schools both rely on the state continuing to get a big chunk of its taxes from a small group of earners,” he added.

This year, the collective net worth of the 62 New York-based billionaires is $562.3 billion, per Forbes. Currently, NY’s top place billionaire is former Mayor Michael Bloomberg with a net worth of $96.3 billion, he is also the eighth richest American.  The youngest to make the billionaire list is Josh Kushner, 38, who founded and runs the venture capitalist firm Thrive Capital.  He has a net worth of $3.6 billion, per Forbes’ list.