Some cool manipulations of tax data

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to pay personal income tax, so nobody could compile any data about our individual income (Land value tax is linked to the land, not the owner, so owner identification isn’t needed for tax purposes.) This world being less than ideal right now, it is nice that the Tax Foundation has mined IRS data for these cool tables linking interstate migration of taxpayers and the amount of income reported. We see that, net in 2008, more taxpayers moved to Illinois from  Michigan than from any other state, while the greatest number of net departures was to Texas.  Altho net emigrants to Florida were less than 1/3 those to Texas, their total “adjusted gross income” was greater, presumably affluent retirees.

The Census Bureau is another source of  interstate migration data.  Those reports are simple population numbers with no income data attached, altho I believe the original source data includes income. The Tax Foundation’s data of course can’t recognize people who do not file federal income tax returns.

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