On substantive point #2, the wording seems perfectly fine to me, and it doesn't seem to me to be at all important a thing to argue about. But here goes: if I say I spend more of my income on vodka than most people do, how is it not obvious that this is a fraction? If I said "I spend more than most people," sure that would be unclear. But when you say "I spend more OF MY INCOME than most people," the fraction (or percentage) is in the darn sentence. Seems quite clear to me. I agree that it would add precision to say "higher percentage of their income" rather than "more of their income," but again, this isn't higher math. Seems pretty basic. If you're arguing that this is a naked attempt to take advantage of people who never learned fractions… well, I'm not sure that is a constituency that's reading much about public policy.

On "the one point CTJ did not address", which as I understand it is "how come this tax hike lost money," I guess my answer would be "revenue estimators are not saying that this tax hike lost money, so why are you saying it?" The income tax base shrank in every state in the nation in 2008, in all likelihood. And states (and there were quite a few of them) that hiked income taxes at the same time raised money by doing so.

It is, of course, conceivable that the 30% decline in millionaires in MD was entirely because of the millionaire's tax. Some of them got mad and left, and the rest got fired or had their pay cut because the added $750 in tax on a $1.1 million salary was just too much for businesses to bear. The comptroller's data doesn't tell us a thing about whether this is actually what happened. But when you assert that this tax cut lost money, you pretty much are asserting that most or all of the decline in the income tax base is because of the millionaire's tax. Which, as I've said already, is a lot more than the fine folks in the MD Comptroller's Office are willing to say.

It would be fun if there were other states we could look at over the same period to see what happened to their millionaires. And there are, in fact, maybe half a dozen states that regularly report statistics of income in a way that breaks out high-end taxpayers. But so far, there is precisely one other state in which an apples-to-apples comparison to MD's experience can be made. That's Utah, which actually lost 60% of its millionaires over the same period. And Utah *cut* their income tax at the same time MD was hiking theirs. What does this prove? Nothing. Nothing at all, except that it's hard to prove anything about the linkage between specific state tax parameters and economic outcomes.

For the record, I tend to think (and serious economists tend to agree) that anyone trying to prove things about the comparative impact of state public policy choices (whether it's the impact of capital punishment on crime rates, or tax stuff, or whatever) using a sample of even 50 states should be laughed out of econometrics class. So when you see people taking a sample of one state and asserting that they know what's going on– well, it's just not good science.

Also for the record, it's absolutely an important thing to think about the relationship between taxation and economic development. But I think the whole "millionaires are leaving" argument doesn't really count as "thinking". It's more akin to starting with your conclusion (income tax hikes hurt economic growth) and looking for anecdotal evidence.

Thanks for the discussion!

First, as the WSJ noted, there is evidence that millionaires are fleeing the state. While it is true that many millionaires had their incomes reduced by the recession, it is also true that a significant percentage (1 in 8, according to the WSJ story) simply left.

Second, the CTJ claims that "low-income families still pay more of their income in Maryland taxes than millionaires must pay", which is an imprecise statement. If the claim is that low-income families pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes, then say so. As the CTJ has it, it appears that low-income families are actually footing more of the overall tax burden than millionaires, which is not anywhere close to true.

Regardless, the issue of whether the rich pay a greater percentage of their income than the poor is of no importance at all in a discussion of how the State of Maryland can solve its runaway spending problems. If the CTJ wants to find creative ways of raising revenue, then it should make those suggestions instead of pursuing social justice aims that may or may not solve the real and pressing fiscal problems of the state. Pushing a political matter as a fiscal solution is also a deception.

The CTJ is more than welcome to pursue its goals of evening out everyone's level of wealth, but not by cloaking them as a means of fixing a very real government spending problem.

The one point the CTJ did not address is how a program that was supposed to raise $106 million more in taxes instead fell short of the pre-tax total by over $200 million. Given that the tax base, due to the recession and attrition, has shrunk markedly, why should we believe that the program will succeed wildly this time?

Tell me more about the "distortions" from Citizens for Tax Justice. What exactly are we distorting? Very interested to know. Thanks!