Taxpayers Still Heading Out of Minnesota, and Our Economy Is Getting Worse

The IRS has released new data on the movement of people and taxable income around the United States.  The data covers 2021 to 2022.  I am sure the general trends are even worse for Minnesota by now.  In general you will note that people are leaving the high-tax, over-regulated Dem-run states and heading for the low-tax, hard-working states, which are governed by you can guess which party.  The people leaving are taking a lot of taxable income with them.  In particular, Texas and Florida continue to gain hundreds of thousands of people every year.  North and South Carolina and Tennessee were also big gainers.  The losers–you already know the list–California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey.  The movement of income is truly massive, Florida, for example, had a net gain of 245,000 filers and dependents in 2022, with $36 billion in income.  California, on the other extreme, lost 307,000 people and $24 billion in income.  Yeah, Gavin, tell us about how much people love California and your crazy policies.

And my home state, whacked Minnesota under the Incompetent Blowhard, Fat Timmy Walz?  We lost 13,455 taxpayers and dependents, who took $2.2 billion in income with them.  Our high tax rates are driving the taxpayers out and replacing them with slackers.  And where did they go?  To no-income tax Florida, with over $1.2 billion of their income. We are the tenth worst state in terms of taxpayer loss and the 8th worst in income loss.  (IRS Data)  (Wirepoints Summary)

Let me point out again that the Minnesota Department of Revenue has all this data, including now up through the 2023 returns filed.  So why are they never releasing reports on income migration?  What a silly question.

Separately, but related, in the latest release of state gross domestic product figures, Minnesota logged a .8% decline in the first quarter, which was attributed to agriculture but that isn’t the whole story.  On an after-inflation basis we actually had a decrease in GDP and ranked 43rd in the country.   Look at the tables–almost every economic area had negative growth–but what showed high growth–state and local government.   Minnesota has weak or non-existent job growth, except in government and businesses continue to leave the state.  We also had a much lower than average growth in personal income in this time period.  In fact, we had pathetic personal income growth, except that transfer payments, i.e. welfare and handouts from the government, grew by 18%.  (BEA Reports)