Hochul Begs Millionaires—Blames Trump, COVID

July 17, 2026

New York’s governor is begging millionaires to come home, blaming Donald Trump and COVID while the data quietly tells a very different story about who really left, why, and what it means for the state’s future.

Story Snapshot

Hochul blames Trump’s tax law and the pandemic for a “millionaire exodus,” not her own policies.
Major studies show millionaire migration barely changed after tax hikes and the 2017 State and Local Tax deduction cap.
Remote work and COVID did spike moves, but patterns largely went back to normal by early 2023.
The working class is leaving far faster than the rich, while a shrinking elite now pays about half the income tax bill.

Hochul’s plea to the rich and her choice of villains

Governor Kathy Hochul now talks about New York’s missing millionaires the way a business owner talks about lost top customers. She admits the tax base “has been eroded” and says she needs affluent people back to fund generous social programs. When pressed on a study showing billions in lost high-earner income, she points her finger away from Albany. Her main culprits are the 2017 Trump tax law that capped the State and Local Tax deduction and the COVID pandemic. Hochul insists she will not raise taxes on high-net-worth individuals or job-creating companies and argues that recent state tax policy is not the reason they left. From a conservative, common-sense view, that sounds like a governor who wants the money of the rich without admitting how much state policy and spending ambitions depend on keeping them put.

Hochul’s story goes like this: Washington changed the rules, New Yorkers suddenly paid higher combined federal and state bills, then COVID hit and remote work let people move families to Palm Beach or Texas full-time. She even calls those who stayed or returned “patriotic millionaires” for continuing to shoulder New York’s heavy load. That moral framing matters. It turns tax compliance into a kind of civic badge, while critics say it hides a simple budget reality: the Empire State built a welfare-heavy model on a narrow group of taxpayers at the top, and now it cannot afford to lose them.

What the hard numbers say about millionaire migration

Here is where the governor’s explanation collides with evidence. A full report from the Fiscal Policy Institute looked at Internal Revenue Service and state data and found no significant rise in millionaire departures after the 2017 and 2021 tax increases on the rich. The same research shows millionaires move less than everyone else, and when they do move, most do not flee to tax havens. In normal years, only about two out of every 1,000 top earners leave New York, a rate one-quarter that of lower-income residents. That does not look like a rush for the exits. It looks like a small, cautious group that weighs their ties, families, and careers before uprooting, even with high taxes.

During the pandemic, departures did spike, especially among those able to work remotely. But more than three-quarters of wealthy movers went not to Florida or Texas, but to other high-tax states such as Connecticut, New Jersey, and California. That pattern undercuts simple “tax hell versus tax haven” talking points from both sides. And by early 2023, the same report notes millionaire migration rates had basically returned to pre-COVID norms. In other words, there was a COVID bump, and then a reset. Conservative outlets call Hochul “desperate” and say high taxes drove wealth away. The data suggests a more narrow story: a modest, temporary shift by top earners who had the most freedom to move when big-city life locked down.

The real exodus: New York’s working and middle class

The biggest long-term change is not in the millionaire ranks. New York’s very rich have actually grown in number since 2010, while working-class residents have left in much larger waves. Reports on the same migration data show that for ordinary families, the main push factors are the cost of living and housing, not income taxes alone. High rent, school quality concerns, crime fears, and basic affordability make a move to another state or suburb far more attractive. That is the quiet crisis under all the noise about the rich. A shrinking base of middle and working-class taxpayers, with a growing share of revenue coming from a small group of high earners, leaves the budget more fragile every year. From a conservative lens, this is the classic warning sign of a blue-state model that leans too heavily on “tax the rich” rhetoric while driving everyday people away.

Millionaires now provide roughly half of New York’s personal income tax revenue, up from about 40% before recent tax hikes. That higher share does not prove they were punished into leaving. It proves the state became even more dependent on them. At the same time, social spending expectations continue to rise. When Hochul says she needs affluent individuals “to support the generous social initiatives,” she’s admitting that the math no longer works if a meaningful slice of them decide they can live better elsewhere.

Remote work, Florida, and the politics of blame

Hochul is correct that remote work broke a kind of invisible chain. For decades, high earners with Manhattan jobs were tethered to New York. Once they could work from anywhere, sunny low-tax states suddenly became live options instead of vacation spots. Conservative commentators highlight Internal Revenue Service data showing tens of billions in income shifting from New York to Florida in a few short years, framing it as simple proof that high earners will not stick around when politicians sneer at them and raise their bills. Florida’s governor and Donald Trump amplify that message, calling New York a “tax hell” and portraying Hochul’s recent plea as panic.

Still, blaming Trump and COVID alone does not fit the facts. Academic work on tax policy shows that big tax cuts for the rich tend to raise inequality without delivering broad growth, while big tax hikes rarely trigger the mass flight that anti-tax activists warn about. New York’s situation looks less like a sudden disaster and more like a long-running political choice: keep taxes and spending high, bet that the wealthy will stay anyway, and then act surprised when even a small fraction of them leave once technology gives them more freedom. American conservative values emphasize responsibility and respect for productive citizens. Telling them to “jump on a bus” to Florida, then years later asking them to come back and underwrite a growing welfare state, sends the exact opposite message. Whether they return will tell New Yorkers a lot about which story they believe.