Maryland’s Missing Millionaires

by Van Helsing | May 26, 2009 1:18 pm

Hopefully the looters running Maryland are learning a lesson[1] regarding the limits of the eat-the-rich politics so fashionable among Obamunists:

Maryland couldn’t balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O’Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were “willing and able to pay their fair share.” The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would “grin and bear it.”

One year later, nobody’s grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller’s office concedes is a “substantial decline.” On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year — even at higher rates.

This is in part due to the recession, but largely due to the wealthy escaping Maryland, just as they’ve been escaping California, New York, and New Jersey. The middle class is left behind to pay for grotesquely metastasizing government. When it is taxed out of existence, Maryland will turn into a giant Detroit.

But this can’t happen at a federal level. You can’t escape Obama’s “spread the wealth around” economics by crossing state lines.

Instead, those with wealth and the companies that create that wealth will be forced to leave the country.

Then we won’t have them to oppress us with employment anymore, and Detroit will stretch from sea to shining sea.

On a tip from baldeagle390. Cross-posted at Moonbattery[2].

Endnotes:
  1. learning a lesson: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124329282377252471.html
  2. Moonbattery: http://www.moonbattery.com/

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