IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juecon/v63y2008i3p920-937.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income taxes and the destination of movers to multistate MSAs

Author

Listed:
  • Coomes, Paul A.
  • Hoyt, William H.

Abstract

We examine how differences in state income tax rates, as well as other state and local taxes and public service expenditures, influence the choice of state of residence for households (federal tax filers) moving into multistate metropolitan areas (MSAs) using data from the IRS on the migration of taxpayers. MSAs that are on borders provide a spatial discontinuity--discrete differences in state tax rates within a single labor market. These MSAs allow residents to live in one state and work in another state. We find that differences in state income tax rates have a significant impact on the relative rate of migration to the states within an MSA. However, contrary to what would be expected, this impact is only significant in MSAs in which the filing state is based on employment (states without reciprocity) and not for those states in which the filing state is the state of residence (states with reciprocity). In MSAs where states do not have reciprocity agreements, a difference of ten percent in tax rates leads to a 4.1 percent difference in the relative rate of incoming taxpayers. Analogously, we find that a ten percent difference in state tax rates in these MSAs results in a 3.3 percent difference in the rate of tax base inflow (AGI). Our results suggest that one reason that differences in state income taxes appear to have more impact in multistate MSAs without reciprocity is that only relatively large differences in state income tax rates have any impact on migration and these differences are much more pronounced in MSAs without reciprocity.

Suggested Citation

  • Coomes, Paul A. & Hoyt, William H., 2008. "Income taxes and the destination of movers to multistate MSAs," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 920-937, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:63:y:2008:i:3:p:920-937
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094-1190(07)00089-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sandra E. Black, 1999. "Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 577-599.
    2. Randall G. Holcombe & Donald J. Lacombe, 2004. "The Effect of State Income Taxation on Per Capita Income Growth," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(3), pages 292-312, May.
    3. Mark, Stephen T. & McGuire, Therese J. & Papke, Leslie E., 2000. "The Influence of Taxes on Employment and Population Growth: Evidence From the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 53(1), pages 105-124, March.
    4. Conway, Karen Smith & Houtenville, Andrew J., 2001. "Elderly Migration and State Fiscal Policy: Evidence From the 1990 Census Migration Flows," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 54(1), pages 103-124, March.
    5. Jon Bakija & Joel Slemrod, 2004. "Do the Rich Flee from High State Taxes? Evidence from Federal Estate Tax Returns," Department of Economics Working Papers 2004-12, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    6. Daniel Feenberg & Elisabeth Coutts, 1993. "An introduction to the TAXSIM model," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 189-194.
    7. Mark, Stephen T. & McGuire, Therese J. & Papke, Leslie E., 2000. "The Influence of Taxes on Employment and Population Growth: Evidence from the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 53(n. 1), pages 105-24, March.
    8. Kanbur, Ravi & Keen, Michael, 1993. "Jeux Sans Frontieres: Tax Competition and Tax Coordination When Countries Differ in Size," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(4), pages 877-892, September.
    9. Conway, Karen Smith & Houtenville, Andrew J., 2001. "Elderly Migration and State Fiscal Policy: Evidence from the 1990 Census Migration Flows," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 54(n. 1), pages 103-24, March.
    10. Conway, Karen Smith & Rork, Jonathan C., 2006. "State "Death" Taxes and Elderly Migration—the Chicken or the Egg?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 59(1), pages 97-128, March.
    11. Walsh, Michael J. & Jones, Jonathan D., 1988. "More Evidence on the "Border Tax" Effect: The Case of West Virginia, 1979-84," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 41(2), pages 261-65, June.
    12. Conway, Karen Smith & Houtenville, Andrew J, 1998. "Do the Elderly "Vote with Their Feet"?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 97(4), pages 663-685, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Onder, Ali Sina & Schlunk, Herwig, 2015. "State Taxes, Tax Exemptions, and Elderly Migration," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 45(1).
    2. Matthew J. Bloomfield & Ulf Brüggemann & Hans B. Christensen & Christian Leuz, 2017. "The Effect of Regulatory Harmonization on Cross‐Border Labor Migration: Evidence from the Accounting Profession," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 35-78, March.
    3. Jon Bakija & Joel Slemrod, 2004. "Do the Rich Flee from High State Taxes? Evidence from Federal Estate Tax Returns," NBER Working Papers 10645, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Justin M. Ross & Robert R. Dunn, 2007. "The Income Tax Responsiveness Of The Rich: Evidence From Free Agent Major League Baseball All‐Stars," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(4), pages 639-648, October.
    5. Tosun, Mehmet S. & Williamson, Claudia R. & Yakovlev, Pavel, 2009. "Population Aging, Elderly Migration and Education Spending: Intergenerational Conflict Revisited," IZA Discussion Papers 4161, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Conway, Karen Smith & Rork, Jonathan C., 2012. "No Country for Old Men (Or Women) — Do State Tax Policies Drive Away the Elderly?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(2), pages 313-356, June.
    7. Johnson, Erik & Walsh, Randall, 2013. "The effect of property taxes on vacation home growth rates: Evidence from Michigan," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(5), pages 740-750.
    8. Richard J. Cebula & J.R. Clark, 2011. "Migration, Economic Freedom, and Personal Freedom: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 27(Fall 2011), pages 43-62.
    9. Henrik Kleven & Camille Landais & Mathilde Muñoz & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2020. "Taxation and Migration: Evidence and Policy Implications," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 119-142, Spring.
    10. Mathilde Munoz, 2019. "How Much are the Poor Losing from Tax Competition: The Welfare Effects of Fiscal Dumping in Europe," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02876988, HAL.
    11. McPhail, Joseph E. & Orazem, Peter & Singh, Rajesh, 2010. "The Poverty of States: Do State Tax Policies Affect State Labor Productivity?," Staff General Research Papers Archive 31552, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    12. Jeffrey Thompson, 2010. "Prioritizing Approaches to Economic Development in New England: Skills, Infrastructure, and Tax Incentives," Published Studies priorities_september7_per, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    13. Masud Alam, 2021. "Heterogeneous Responses to the U.S. Narrative Tax Changes: Evidence from the U.S. States," Papers 2107.13678, arXiv.org.
    14. Neil Bania & Joe A. Stone, 2008. "Ranking state fiscal structures using theory and evidence," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 751-770.
    15. Margit Schratzenstaller, 2023. "Behavioral Responses to Inheritance Taxation. A Review of the Empirical Literature," WIFO Working Papers 668, WIFO.
    16. Braid, Ralph M., 2009. "The employment effects of a central city's source-based wage tax or hybrid wage tax," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 512-521, July.
    17. David R. Agrawal & Dirk Foremny & Clara Martínez-Toledano, 2020. ""Paraísos fiscales", wealth taxation, and mobility," Working Papers 2020/15, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    18. William H. Hoyt & J. William Harden, 2005. "MSA Location and the Impact of State Taxes on Employment and Population: A Comparison of Border and Interior MSA's," Working Papers 2005-01, University of Kentucky, Institute for Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations.
    19. Jeremy McCauley, 2020. "The Role of Information in Explaining the Lack of Welfare-Induced Migration," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 20/729, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    20. Richard Cebula & Christopher Duquette & Franklin Mixon, 2013. "Factors Influencing the State-Level Settlement Pattern of the Undocumented Immigrant Population in the United States," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 41(3), pages 203-213, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:63:y:2008:i:3:p:920-937. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622905 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.