Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Key Findings
1) When surveyed in March 2013, a substantial percentage of residents in California’s most affluent communities were seriously considering (12%) or somewhat considering (13%) moving out of state as a response to recent increases in the state’s income tax rates.
2) To reduce the incremental burden of the new income tax increases, 75% of individuals surveyed were planning on taking at least one of the following actions: -- increasing their level of philanthropic contributions, increasing their tax deductions, using more tax-free financial instruments such as municipal government bonds, and reducing their overall earnings.
3) Using multivariate analysis, consideration of moving out of state does not correlate significantly with whether people think that the state is on the right or wrong track, with ideology, with length of residency or with familiarity with the tax increases.
4) Instead, the strongest predictive variable for considering moving out of state is whether the respondent knows someone who made a similar move. This finding suggests that California could experience a snowball effect if the negative attitudes associated with the tax increase directly translates into even a relatively small number of out migrations.