New York lost more personal income tax filers than it gained for the 10th straight year in 2024, extending a decline that has removed more than 350,000 tax returns from the state’s resident base since 2015.
The latest data do not point to an accelerating exodus. Taxpayer losses have fallen sharply since the pandemic and reached their lowest level in a decade last year. Still, the continued departure of married, middle- and upper-income households presents a longer-term problem for a state that relies heavily on personal income taxes to fund government operations.
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released a taxpayer migration dashboard this month using data from the state Department of Taxation and Finance. It tracks part-year resident filers whose returns show they moved into or out of New York during the tax year.
The dashboard shows 121,251 filers moved into New York in 2024, while 134,913 left. The difference was a net loss of 13,662 filers, equal to roughly one out of every 1,000 resident taxpayers.
That was New York’s smallest annual loss since the dashboard’s data begin in 2015.
It was also another year in which more taxpayers left than arrived.
New York has lost taxpayers for a decade
About 1.26 million tax filers moved into New York between 2015 and 2024, while nearly 1.61 million moved out. The state recorded a cumulative net loss of about 351,600 filers during that period.
Before the pandemic, New York was losing between 27,000 and 30,000 filers each year.
The net loss was 30,201 in 2015, followed by 28,875 in 2016, 27,972 in 2017, 27,076 in 2018 and 29,386 in 2019.
The largest decline came in 2020, when the state lost 112,458 more filers than it gained. Departures jumped during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic as remote work, public health restrictions and uncertainty changed where some households lived and worked.
That surge did not continue.
The net loss dropped to 39,247 filers in 2021, 27,089 in 2022, 15,681 in 2023 and 13,662 last year.
The 2024 decline was less than half of the annual losses New York recorded before the pandemic and nearly 88% below the 2020 peak.
The numbers support DiNapoli’s conclusion that the pandemic-era movement was an aberration. They do not show that New York has reversed the broader trend.
Even after removing 2020 from the calculation, the state lost about 239,000 more filers than it gained during the other nine years.
Married and middle-income filers are driving the loss
The overall decline was relatively small compared with New York’s full tax base, but the losses were not spread evenly across households.
Married filers accounted for the largest share of the decline in 2024.
New York recorded a net loss of 15,144 married filers. That was partly offset by a net gain of 4,326 single filers, while the state lost 2,844 head-of-household filers.
The most significant decline came from married households earning between $100,000 and $500,000. New York lost about 8,200 more filers in that group than it gained, representing more than half of the state’s total net loss for the year.
Across all filing categories, the state lost nearly 7,700 filers earning between $100,000 and $500,000.
New York also recorded a net loss of more than 2,000 filers earning at least $500,000.
The number of high-income filers leaving was smaller than the number of middle-income filers, but the migration rate was higher. In 2024, New York lost about one out of every 100 resident filers earning more than $500,000 through net migration.
That distinction matters because taxpayers do not contribute equally to state revenue.
Personal income taxes account for more than half of the tax revenue collected by New York. Higher earners pay a disproportionate share of those taxes, meaning the departure of a relatively small number of wealthy households can have a larger fiscal effect than the raw migration count suggests.
The dashboard does not calculate how much tax revenue moved with those filers. A person who changes residency may continue paying New York taxes on income earned in the state, and the data do not explain why individual households moved.
The numbers also count tax returns, not people. A married return may represent two adults and children, while a single return generally represents one person.
Still, the pattern shows New York is struggling to retain established households in some of the income groups most important to its tax base.
Upstate regions face a broader decline
Taxpayer migration is one part of a larger competitiveness problem that looks different across New York.
The Citizens Budget Commission’s new Competitive NYS dashboard found the state’s population grew 3% between 2010 and 2025, compared with 10% nationally. Jobs increased 16.6% during the same period, compared with 23.6% nationally, while economic output grew 28.5%, compared with 42.1% across the country.
Most of New York’s growth was concentrated in New York City, the Hudson Valley, Long Island and the Capital Region. The CBC also identified stronger urban employment centers around Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse.
Outside those areas, several regions lost population and posted little or no job growth.
The Finger Lakes region’s population declined 0.5% between 2010 and 2025. Jobs grew 3.9%, while regional economic output increased 10.9%, both well below statewide and national growth.
Central New York lost 2.5% of its population. The Mohawk Valley declined 4.3%, the Southern Tier fell 4.8% and the North Country lost 5.6%.
The Mohawk Valley, Southern Tier and North Country also recorded net job losses during the 15-year period.
Public school enrollment fell across every region. The Finger Lakes recorded a 17.1% decline, while enrollment dropped about 20% in the Mohawk Valley and Southern Tier.
Those trends create a different kind of tax-base pressure for local governments.
A county, town or school district can lose residents without seeing an equal reduction in its operating costs. Roads, public buildings, emergency services, courts, schools and water systems still have to be maintained.
When fewer households and businesses support those costs, governments must reduce services, raise more revenue from the remaining tax base or rely more heavily on state assistance.
That pressure can become self-reinforcing. Higher taxes and weaker services can make it more difficult to attract residents and employers, further narrowing the tax base.
Is New York’s tax base collapsing?
The available data do not show a sudden collapse.
New York continues to have one of the country’s largest economies, high per-capita income and major concentrations of finance, health care, technology, higher education and professional employment.
More than 120,000 tax filers moved into the state in 2024. New York has also recorded net gains among single filers each year since 2022.
The state’s annual taxpayer loss has fallen for four consecutive years and is now below the levels seen before the pandemic.
But the decline is persistent.
New York has not recorded a single year of net taxpayer growth since at least 2015. It continues to lose married households and higher-income filers, while several upstate regions face overlapping declines in population, employment and school enrollment.
The immediate fiscal effect of losing 13,662 filers in one year is manageable for a state with millions of taxpayers.
The longer-term risk comes from allowing that loss to continue year after year, particularly if the departing households are replaced by taxpayers with lower incomes or are not replaced at all.
New York is not watching its tax base disappear overnight. It is seeing a slow erosion that has eased since the pandemic but has not stopped.
Whether that erosion becomes a larger fiscal problem will depend on the state’s ability to improve housing availability, employment growth, energy costs, taxes, child care and other affordability pressures that affect where families and businesses choose to locate.
For now, the answer is clear: New York is still losing part of its tax base. The decline is smaller than it was, but after a decade of losses, it is no longer temporary.
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