Sorry New York Times, Tax Flight of the Rich Is Not a Myth

James B. Stewart writes “Common Sense” for the Business Day section of The New York Times. A Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and a professor of journalism at Columbia, Stewart’s The Myth of the Rich Who Flee From Taxes is either amateurish economics or deliberate distortion to pursue a political agenda.

Stewart writes to dispel, as a myth not worth thinking about, the notion that high marginal tax rates in one municipality, state, or a country push the wealthy to move to lower-tax locations. He assures his readers that although the notion “on its face seems to make sense…it is not the case. It turns out that a large majority of people move for far more compelling reasons, like jobs, the cost of housing, family ties or a warmer climate.”  (Stewart: Stop the “Strawmanism.” No one claims tax rates are the primary determinant of where we live).


go to forbes.com