New Yorkers with six-figure salaries who fled to Austin saved between $65,000 and $260,000 a year thanks to lower taxes and a lower cost of living.

A worker making $650,000 in Manhattan could have saved more than $250,000 a year by moving to Austin, Texas, where taxes and the cost of living are lower, a new study finds.

People with six-figure annual incomes can save more than 40% of their salary and cut their effective tax rate by up to 10 percentage points by changing jobs, according to research published Thursday by Smart Asset.

The study compared the cost savings for high-income people moving to Austin from Chicago, San Francisco, or New York and found that New Yorkers saw the greatest savings.

This is due in part to the extremely high cost of living in New York State, which is 122 percent higher than the national average, while Austin's cost of living is in line with the national average.

Austin also offers more favorable tax rates, but this difference is primarily due to Texas' lack of a state income tax.

High earners in New York are taxed at an effective tax rate of 37 percent to 45 percent, while in Austin, the same income level is taxed in the range of 27 percent to 35 percent.

For a New Yorker earning $150,000 a year, the study found that moving to Austin would save a total of $64,811 a year.

Housing costs contribute significantly to the difference in the cost of living between New York and Austin.

According to Realtor.com, the median home listing price in New York is $819,000, compared to $675,000 in Austin.

SmartAsset also found that high-income earners in San Francisco could save significantly by moving to Austin, but the difference is not as large as moving from Manhattan.

Overall, people with six-figure annual incomes can save about 33% by moving from San Francisco to Austin.

On the other hand, the difference in moving from Chicago to Austin is less impressive.

Austin has lower taxes, but the difference is more or less offset by Chicago's lower cost of living, where high-income earners can expect to save only 11 to 12 percent of their income by moving.

Texas has experienced a population boom in recent years, driven in part by an influx of wealthy new immigrants from the Northeast.

The Lone Star State added 470,708 residents last year, joining California as the only two U.S. states with more than 30 million people.

From April 2020 to July 2022, New York and California had the largest net loss of residents, each losing more than 500,000 people.

This change reflects significant internal migration and is likely to fuel a rapid population boom in the South, with economic and political consequences for decades to come.

Experts cite a combination of factors, including increased remote work, pandemic-related health concerns over dense urban areas, housing costs driving an influx of domestic immigrants into Sunbelt states, high taxes, and concerns about crime. There is.