The Great American Tax Migration: State Winners and Losers in 2023
The IRS just dropped its 2022–2023 state migration data, and the numbers paint a striking picture of a migratory and fiscal reshuffling with real consequences for state budgets, housing markets, and state economies at large.
In 2023 alone, 6.7 million Americans packed up and moved across state lines. Among them: roughly 700,000 high earners ($200,000+), taking their income, their tax dollars, and their economic gravity with them.
So where are they going? And who’s losing them?
The Winners
Florida and Texas are running away with this. Florida netted 113,494 new residents, including 50,485 high earners, bringing a staggering $20.7 billion in income into the state. To put that in perspective, more than $17 billion of that came from high earners alone.
Texas came in close behind with 111,079 net new residents and $5.3 billion in net new income. But here’s an interesting difference: Texas attracted far fewer high earners proportionally (15,470 vs. Florida’s 50,485). Texas is growing fast, but its migration story is broader and more working- and middle-class than Florida’s.
The Carolinas are quietly becoming migration powerhouses. North Carolina gained 69,001 residents and $3.9 billion in income; South Carolina gained 58,610 and $4.1 billion. Tennessee added 42,401 residents and $2.8 billion. Georgia rounded out the list with 34,800 net new residents, but total income of negative $35 million (net positive $1.9 billion from high earners). This suggests the overall mix of Georgia movers skews toward lower-income transplants, even as it attracts a meaningful number of wealthy arrivals.
Arizona rounded out the winners at 26,215 residents and $2.7 billion.
The Losers
California lost 205,788 residents, the largest net outflow in the country, including 37,777 high earners. They took $13 billion in income with them, $7.6 billion of that from the high-earner cohort alone. That’s not just people leaving, but a significant narrowing of the tax base.
New York wasn’t far behind, losing 161,963 residents and $10.6 billion in income. Between California and New York, that’s nearly 368,000 people and $23.6 billion in annual income gone in a single year.
Illinois (-54,881 residents, -$6.2 billion), New Jersey (-31,456, -$2.8 billion), Massachusetts (-29,870, -$4.2 billion), and Maryland (-20,578, -$1.9 billion) round out the losers. Notably, every single one of these states has high income taxes, and state policymakers that continue to squeeze their states highest earners for more and more revenues.
What This Actually Means
State tax revenues are heavily tied to the income taxes paid by high earners. When a state loses nearly 38,000 high-income filers in a single year, as California did, it doesn’t just lose those people’s tax contributions. It loses the downstream economic activity they generate: the restaurants they eat at, the employees they hire, the properties they buy.
Meanwhile, states like Florida, which has no income tax, are compounding their advantages. More high earners move in, raising property values and consumer spending, which funds government through sales and property taxes. It’s a virtuous cycle for the state, and a vicious one for those bleeding residents.
One data point that deserves a double-take: New Jersey lost $2.8 billion from all movers but $2.9 billion from high earners alone. That’s not a typo. It means that lower-income movers into New Jersey partially offset the high-earner losses, but the state is still in the red on net income. The people leaving are disproportionately the ones who pay the most in taxes.
The Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a single sentence summary: high-tax, high-cost blue states are exporting their wealthiest residents to low-tax Sunbelt states, and the IRS data proves it at scale.
This trend predates COVID, but the pandemic supercharged it, and remote work broke the geographic tether that kept high earners in expensive metros. Three years later, the data confirms those movements weren’t temporary.