New York lost a larger share of the nation's millionaires than any other state over the past decade, and the price tag for that exodus now runs to nearly $11 billion in a single year of foregone tax revenue, a new Citizens Budget Commission analysis found.
The CBC's "Competitive NYS: Value Proposition Tracker" dashboard, released Monday, shows New York's share of the country's millionaires fell from 12.7 percent in 2010 to 8.7 percent in 2022. Had the state simply held its position, personal income tax collections in tax year 2022 alone would have been roughly $10.7 billion higher.
That is not a rounding error. It is a structural fiscal wound, one inflicted not by recession or natural disaster, but by Albany's own policy choices. And it arrives just as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pressing to squeeze even more from the wealthy residents who remain.
New York still added millionaires in absolute terms, roughly 34,000 more in 2022 than in 2010. But rival states grew far faster. The CBC found that the millionaire count tripled in California and Texas and quadrupled in Florida over the same period. By 2022 New York had dropped to fourth in total millionaires, behind all three.
The state's top 1 percent of earners pay about 45 percent of all state income taxes in any given year, Tax Foundation senior fellow Jared Walczak told the New York Post. When those earners leave, the revenue hole is enormous, and it falls on everyone else.
New York already leads the nation in state and local taxes collected per capita at $12,495, a figure the CBC described as 78 percent above the U.S. average. The Tax Foundation ranks New York dead last for tax competitiveness. Those two facts together tell a simple story: the state charges more than anyone and gets less loyalty in return.
Policy experts lined up to identify the culprits. Ken Girardin, a research fellow at the Manhattan Institute, pointed to the state's tightened rent control law approved in 2019 and its green energy mandate as factors that reduced housing supply and raised energy costs.
"Albany is directly responsible for the stagnation."
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo hiked income taxes on high earners during the pandemic. Medicaid spending under Governor Kathy Hochul is projected to reach $58 billion by the end of the decade. Each new burden adds another reason for mobile wealth to consider the exit.
Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who has repeatedly targeted wealthy elites and federal enforcement in public speeches, dismissed concerns about millionaire flight at an unrelated event Monday. He argued that New York had more millionaires even after Albany's past tax increases.
Walczak offered a different reading. He told the Post that a pied-à-terre tax, which both Mamdani and Hochul have backed, would have "some impact," but the larger problem is perception:
"There's this feeling that New York isn't done raising taxes, and with other places being more competitive, it won't be surprising if high-earner taxpayers choose to relocate."
The tension between City Hall and capital is not theoretical. Mamdani filmed a social media video outside billionaire Ken Griffin's $238 million Manhattan penthouse to promote the pied-à-terre tax. Griffin responded by threatening to pull a $6 billion Park Avenue development.
Whether Griffin follows through remains an open question. But the confrontation illustrates the dynamic the CBC data describes: a city government that treats wealthy residents as ATMs, and wealthy residents who increasingly have the option, and the incentive, to leave.
Mamdani's broader policy agenda has drawn opposition from multiple quarters. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman recently invoked a 150-year-old state constitution clause to challenge the mayor's $70 million city-owned grocery plan, and the administration has faced scrutiny over foreign-policy entanglements after the State Department shut down a planned meeting between a Mamdani official and Iran's UN ambassador.
The most important voice in the CBC debate may belong to Steve Fulop, CEO of the Partnership for New York City. His warning cut through the ideological noise:
"If we don't course-correct and get laser-focused on keeping the city and state attractive to the people and businesses that drive our economy, the affordability crisis will only deepen because the people leaving are the ones paying the largest share of a budget that funds the social programs meant to help our most vulnerable."
That is the core contradiction in Mamdani's position. He told reporters Monday that "one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty" and that "the wealthiest can do a little bit more to ensure that everyone can afford to live here." But the CBC data shows the wealthiest are already doing something, they are leaving. And every departure makes the budget math worse for the very New Yorkers Mamdani says he wants to help.
Tax Foundation senior state policy analyst Abir Mandal framed it bluntly:
"Wall Street is the golden goose. But for how long?"
Mandal argued that without reforming its tax structure, New York will not be competitive for attracting population and business. She cited Elon Musk's decision to move his companies from California to Texas as a warning of what happens when high-tax states push too hard.
The damage is not confined to Manhattan penthouses. The CBC study found that New York has lost more population to every other state than it has gained from any of them. Florida and Texas are among the biggest recipients of former New Yorkers. After a pandemic-era exodus from the city, the population rebound in 2023 and 2024 was driven by international immigrants, not by the return of the taxpayers who left.
A "growth corridor" from New York City and Long Island to Albany largely drives the state's economy, the study noted. But upstate and rural regions, the North Country, the Southern Tier, are hemorrhaging workers with no rebound in sight.
Justin Wilcox, executive director of Upstate United, said the CBC's findings should alarm every New Yorker:
"With this CBC tool, Upstate New Yorkers can see for themselves the devastating impacts of Albany's policies, businesses failing to grow, population decline, and the loss of revenue. NYS needs to course correct now before it's too late and we become permanently entrenched in a cycle of fewer people."
Internal political friction has only added to the sense of drift around Mamdani's leadership. The Democratic Socialists of America recently moved to blacklist one of the mayor's own advisers after a disastrous state Senate campaign, raising questions about whether even Mamdani's ideological allies believe his team can govern effectively.
Governor Hochul, who is seeking re-election in November, has at least drawn a partial line, opposing an outright tax hike on the wealthy this year while backing the narrower pied-à-terre levy. Whether that distinction holds under campaign pressure remains to be seen.
But the broader trajectory is clear. New York collects more per person than any state in America. It ranks last in tax competitiveness. Its share of the nation's highest earners has cratered. And its political leaders are debating not how to reverse the decline, but how aggressively to accelerate it.
Walczak summed up the structural bind: "New York's revenue is very reliant on high earners to stay in New York, and that has been a challenge in recent years." He added that City Hall cannot fix the problem alone, "it takes Albany." Yet Albany has spent the better part of a decade tightening rent controls, expanding Medicaid obligations, imposing energy mandates, and raising income tax rates on the very people who fund the system.
The CBC study does not use the word "crisis." It does not need to. A state that lost a larger share of its millionaires than any competitor, that trails all fifty states in tax competitiveness, and that now depends on international immigration rather than domestic retention to refill its population, that state is not on a sustainable path.
You can demand the wealthy "do a little bit more." But the $10.7 billion question is whether they will still be here to do it.