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Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political analyst.

Sometimes, even in their worst moments, candidates will say something interesting and perhaps important.

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As Gov. Phil Scott may have done last week in taking his hokey and misleading “poll” during his debate with Democratic challenger Christine Hallquist.

Scott decided to ask the roughly 200 people in the audience if they made a lot of money. Raise your hand if you make a million, he said. No response, so he tried half a million and then 300 grand.

Still no one’s hand went up, which demonstrated, Scott said, that “we have the most progressive tax system in the country right here in Vermont. So I’m not sure how many of these rich people we have left in Vermont, because they’re moving out.”

It demonstrated nothing.

As it turns out, $300,000 a year is just about what takes to get a household into the top 1 percent of Vermont earners. So one or two in that audience may have earned that kind of money.

And therefore been smart enough not to raise their hands and make themselves objects of interest and envy.

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As to Vermont’s tax system, it is one of the more progressive. But the most progressive?

There ain’t no such animal. Experts do not even agree on the criteria to use to make that judgement. Scholars at the Tax Policy Center run jointly by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution reported finding “two statistical indexes to summarize the overall progressivity of taxes.” One finds Vermont the fourth most progressive. The other says no, it’s the fifth most progressive.

And who would bet against another researcher finding it the third or the seventh most progressive? This is not an exact science.

The only state with a really progressive tax system is … well, it isn’t. In every state, the rich pay a smaller percentage of their incomes in state and local taxes than do the lowest-income taxpayers.

Even in Vermont, where according to the most recent report (from 2015) of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution scale pay 7.7 percent of their incomes while those in the middle bracket pay 10.5 percent and those at the bottom pay 8.9 percent.

But while that 7.7 percent might be less than other Vermonters pay, it’s more than their wealthy counterparts pay in most other states. The nationwide average is 5.4 percent. So Scott has a point. Vermont’s (relatively) progressive tax system does create an incentive for rich people to move away.

Some do. But in his remarks at the debate, Scott was suggesting that the wealthy were moving away in such droves that hardly any were left.

Plenty are left. The Wall Street Journal recently compiled a report on how many households in each state had at least $1 million in “investable assets.” Vermont had 15,363, which was 5.88 percent of all households. In 17 states and the District of Columbia, that percentage was higher.

Meaning in 32 states the percentage is lower. Vermont, it seems, has no shortage of rich folks.

Defining wealth more broadly, the number of Vermont households reporting annual income of more than $200,000 steadily increased from 2013 through 2016, the last year for which Tax Department records are available. By any measure, Vermont seems to be at least holding its own when it comes to upper-income earners.

Not that none of them move away. It makes perfect sense. A Vermont household with $300,00 a year in taxable income (which would be much more in total income) is likely to pay (based on that ITEP report) roughly $23,000 in state and local taxes.

In Florida, they’d pay $5,700. That’s a big savings. Why don’t they all do it?

Because most can’t or don’t want to. Retirees can make this move. So could a business owner whose firm doesn’t need his or her day-to-day presence. Few others can wander away from the source of their livelihood. The livelihood, in most cases, is what made them wealthy to begin with. If that livelihood is in Vermont and they want to continue to be wealthy, they have to stick around.

Besides, in real life the savings would be smaller, if still substantial. The household’s Vermont property taxes would go up if their Vermont home were no longer their main residence. Wherever else they may live could turn out to be more expensive. Housing in Miami is a third more expensive than in Burlington, according to the Zillow real estate firm.

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Not to mention that the people in this household would have to want to live for at least six months a year in wherever they fled. Most rich people are sensible and intelligent; otherwise they wouldn’t be rich. It wouldn’t seem sensible for them to live someplace they hated just to save money. Even with its big Vermont tax bill, that household would have something like $200,000 to spend as it chose.

Folks in Vermont can live very comfortably – no, make that quite opulently – on that kind of money

Finally – and here is where Scott may have a point, at least looking forward – the total saved by moving to a lower-tax state has been smaller than it would seem at first glance because state and local tax payments have been deductible from federal taxable income.

So that $17,300 a wealthy family might save by moving from Vermont to Florida has been adding $17,300 to its federal taxable income, making its federal tax bill something like $6,000 higher.

But the new federal tax bill substantially reduces state and local tax deductibility, meaning there will be more financial incentive for the rich to move elsewhere.

Causing a huge exodus of the affluent?

Oh, probably not. People make decisions on where to live for all kinds of reasons – sentimental, familial, romantic, vocational, and recreational as much as financial.

But it’s something to keep an eye on, a reminder for which to thank the governor, even if that silly “poll” was not his finest moment.

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