California Mints Millionaires Faster Than They Can Leave
New IRS data show the state’s share of US taxpayers making $1 million or more rose from 2019 to 2021. The same can’t be said of Florida, Texas and New York.
California looks like a million bucks.
Photographer: Mary Turner/Getty Images
After Covid-19 arrived in 2020, a lot of wealthy people fled locked-down California. Elon Musk, the world’s second-richest human, moved to Texas, griping that the Golden State had become “a little complacent, a little entitled.” Venture capitalist Keith Rabois headed to Miami, saying that “San Francisco is just so massively improperly run and managed that it’s impossible to stay here.” Other prominent tech figures decamped for Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming and elsewhere.
It might come as a surprise, then, that the number of California residents with incomes of $1 million or more grew by 61,900, or 66%, from 2019 to 2021, according to statistics released last week by the Internal Revenue Service. Booming asset markets and pay increases sent the number of tax millionaires up sharply in every state, and their numbers more than doubled in Montana, Idaho and Utah, but California’s percentage increase was above average. Its share of US millionaires rose to 17.9% in 2021 from 17% in 2019, while those of next three most populous and millionaire-filled states — New York, Texas and Florida — fell.