Paul Tudor Jones has taken his marbles and moved to Florida, according to recent sources. In most states, it probably wouldn't matter what one person does, but Connecticut is not most states. Last year, Jones made about $600 million, giving him a CT income tax bill of around $30 million. Florida has no income tax. Although he could obviously afford to pay his tax bill here, many people feel that paying what you don't need to pay is always a bad idea; that is, smart people minimize taxes.
I just did a little math about what that means for the rest of us, since the State has announced that, once again, their tax collections in the most recent period fell short of projections. Although Jones moved late last year, I suppose it's possible that Connecticut didn't find out until taxes were due. After all, most people don't announce their departures.
Connecticut has about 1.3 million households. Using Federal data, it seems that 73% of CT taxpayers pay income taxes nationally, which is a very high rate. If we assume that the State collection would be at the same rate, 949,000 households pay taxes. When Mr. Jones left, his $30 million tax bill would then get divided up amongst all of us, adding about $32 to each bill in the State. And that's before any increases for cost of living, additional services, repairs and maintenance, or other parts of the State budget. You can see that, if enough people leave, the rest of us will be paying for that, year after year. So maybe we should all care about the 1%, since their comings and goings affect us all!
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