Tuesday is Tax Day in America, one of the most stressful days of the year, when many taxpayers will finally end their procrastination, file their federal returns, and hope for a refund from the IRS. But for many of the nation's wealthiest, it's just another Tuesday.
Page F8From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 27 September 2026
Rich seek repeal of Washington's millionaire tax before year one; New York's tax brought millionaires in
As it ran on the front
The item on my desk says Washington State voters will get a chance to accept or reject the 9.9 percent income tax on millionaires the Legislature approved, the one that broke the state's taboo against levying income taxes. The tax has not finished a year. The ballot measure arrived anyway, so let's do the arithmetic the repeal argument rests on.
The argument is departure. The clearest wording I have for it comes from New York, from the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who said last year that "it only takes a handful of successful people to leave to decimate the city's tax base." That was said about the prospect of a mayor who would have rich locals pay more to help fund services. The Gristedes chief executive, John Catsimatidis, was in the same stream of warnings, and so was Fox News. Panicking was the word used.…
…(cont) On September 10 the finding came back. New York raised taxes on the rich and more millionaires moved in. That is the result, and it points the other way from the warning. A handful leaving is a number. More arriving is also a number, with the opposite sign. I am not calling that a surprise, because I have no receipt saying anyone was surprised.
Five days later, on September 15, Fox News ran a list under the headline "Forget paying your 'fair share' of taxes. Here are 5 ways politicians want even more." The count of five belongs to the headline; the summary names four of them — capital gains tax increases, wealth taxes, estate tax changes and surtaxes. A departure count is not among the four. The September 10 finding is not among them either. The list and the finding ran five days apart, and only one of them carries a result.
There is an older drawer here as well. On Tax Day 2023, a group of millionaires published a column under their own names arguing that people like them should pay more, and observing that for many of the nation's wealthiest, Tax Day is just another Tuesday. That column has been sitting on the record for three years.
So here is the reconciliation, the way I would file it. Washington has one rate, 9.9 percent, on one group of filers, with under twelve months of its own data. New York has the comparable move and a published result, and that result runs against the repeal. The ballot asks voters to settle the question before Washington's own column has a number in it. The evidence on the table belongs to another state, and it argues the other side.
“Every time somebody taxes the top, we get the same weather report: the money has legs, the money is packing, a handful of good men leave and the city falls over. New York ran the experiment and more millionaires showed up — that's the filing, not my opinion. Now the rich in Washington want a repeal vote before the thing has twelve months of receipts, and whatever's in those twelve months is the schools and the clinics your kid uses.”
“Nobody said mass exodus. Did I say exodus? A handful — that's the quote, that's Ackman's sentence, I'm reading a man's words back to you. And look, New York is New York and Washington is Washington, you can't just compare two states, which is precisely why we've been comparing them since Tuesday.”
The receipts
Washington State voters will get a chance to accept or reject the 9.9 percent income tax on millionaires approved by the Legislature, which broke the state’s taboo against levying income taxes.
· Forget paying your ‘fair share’ of taxes. Here are 5 ways politicians want even more from the morgue, 15 Sep 2026
· Guess What Happened After New York Raised Taxes on the Rich? More Millionaires Moved In from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.