A new analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) finds that the Empire State’s share of the nation’s millionaires has plunged over the past decade, taking with it a massive slice of tax revenue as high-income residents decamp for states that do not treat success as something to be punished. According to RedState, the CBC report shows that New York’s portion of American millionaires dropped from 12.7 percent in 2010 to just 8.7 percent in 2022, the sharpest decline recorded by any state, and the fiscal fallout is already visible in Albany’s ledgers.
The study estimates that personal income tax collections in 2022 alone were roughly $10.7 billion lower than they would have been had New York simply maintained its earlier share of wealthy taxpayers. Those departing residents are not marginal contributors; they are the very people who shoulder a disproportionate share of the state’s tax burden, leaving a gaping hole that ripples through funding for public services, infrastructure, and long-term investment.
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Economist Jared Walczak underscored just how dependent New York has become on a small cadre of top earners to sustain its expansive government. “In New York, the top 1% of earners pay about 45% of all state income taxes in any given year, so New York’s revenue is very reliant on high earners to stay in New York, and that has been a challenge in recent years,” he told the New York Post.
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That challenge now carries a price tag of roughly $11 billion a year, a direct consequence of a political class that insists on “taxing the rich” even as the rich quietly vote with their feet. Rather than rewarding productivity, investment, and job creation, New York’s leadership has chosen to squeeze the very people who fund the state’s ambitions, only to discover that capital and talent are far more mobile than progressive rhetoric admits.
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The CBC’s findings offer concrete evidence that the “tax the rich” mantra does not, in practice, generate the windfall its advocates promise for lower-income families or public infrastructure. Instead, it is draining money from the state and from the very residents who might otherwise benefit from a thriving, competitive economy anchored by a robust tax base.
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From a conservative economic perspective, this is precisely what critics of confiscatory tax policy have warned about for years: punitive rates drive away investment, shrink the tax base, and ultimately undermine the social programs progressives claim to protect. Yet in New York, the architects of these policies appear unmoved by the data, clinging to ideological talking points even as the fiscal ground erodes beneath them.
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“Taxing the rich is a platform for the economically illiterate,” the critique goes, and New York’s current leadership offers little reason to dispute that assessment. Unfortunately for the Empire State, the “economically illiterate” now occupy some of the most powerful positions in government, from Governor Kathy Hochul in Albany to self-styled socialist and “C-ommunist” Zohran Kwame Mamdani in New York City.
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Democrats, in other words, are not making the rich “pay their fair share”; they are shooting their own state in the foot. The result is a shrinking pool of high earners, a ballooning budget, and a growing dependence on an ever-smaller number of taxpayers who are increasingly aware that friendlier jurisdictions stand ready to welcome them.
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The New York Post notes that Hochul has so far resisted the most extreme proposals to further hike taxes on the wealthy, but she has entertained some of the same ideas championed by Mamdani, including the controversial pied-à-terre tax. That is the levy Mamdani promoted in an unsettling social media video in which he declared, “Happy Tax Day!” while effectively stalking the home of hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin.
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“Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich,” the video proclaimed, encapsulating the triumphalist tone of a political movement that treats wealth as inherently suspect. Walczak, however, offered a sobering counterpoint, noting that the prevailing expectation among investors and high earners is that the state is not finished raising taxes.
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Walczak warned that the widespread belief is that “New York isn’t done raising taxes, and ... it won’t be surprising if high-earner taxpayers choose to relocate.” If that prediction holds, the billions already lost in revenue may prove to be only the beginning, as each additional departure compounds the fiscal damage and accelerates the state’s competitive decline.
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Confronted with the CBC’s numbers, Mamdani responded not with reflection but with the familiar progressive instinct to double down. Presented with an opportunity to reconsider, he instead offered the standard redistributionist line that the wealthy can always be squeezed a bit more to fund an ever-expanding government.
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“The wealthiest can do a little bit more to ensure that everyone can afford to live here,” he told reporters. “And the little bit more—and we’re talking about the pied-à-terre tax—it’s a tax on non-resident New Yorkers’ secondary homes that are worth more than $5 million. I think that that’s common sense, and most New Yorkers feel the same way.”
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“I look forward to continuing to advance the vision of our city,” Mamdani added, signaling that the exodus of high earners and the resulting budget strain will not deter him from pursuing an aggressively redistributionist agenda. For those concerned about the long-term health of New York’s economy, that “vision” looks less like common sense and more like a slow-motion invitation to capital flight.
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New York already ranks dead last in competitiveness, according to Tax Foundation senior state policy analyst Abir Mandel, who argues that the state’s high taxes are pushing both businesses and high earners toward more tax-friendly environments. “Without reforming the tax structure, New York won’t be competitive for attracting population and business,” he told the Post. “Wall Street is the golden goose. But for how long?”
The answer may be: not much longer, if policymakers like Mamdani prevail and if Hochul continues to flirt with punitive measures rather than structural reform. Democrat math now looks like this: $11 billion in tax revenue gone, while state spending ballooned by $18.1 billion last year, a trajectory that would alarm any household or business but is treated as routine in Albany.
Layered on top of the crushing tax burden are strict rent controls, soaring energy costs driven by aggressive green mandates, and a dense thicket of regulations that make it harder to build, hire, and grow. These policies, taken together, are driving out the very people and enterprises that once made New York an economic powerhouse, turning what should be a model of free-market dynamism into a fiscal cautionary tale that other states would be wise to avoid.
