JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is warning that Washington State’s newly announced millionaires tax is precisely the kind of policy that sends wealthy residents packing, and he laid out exactly what comes next for states that refuse to learn the lesson.
Appearing Tuesday morning on Fox and Friends with host Brian Kilmeade, Dimon was asked about a cascade of new tax proposals hitting simultaneously, including New York City’s plan to raise its corporate tax rate from 7.5 to 9 percent, Washington’s 9.9% millionaires tax, and a California billionaires tax referendum. His message to every city and state pursuing the same strategy was the same, and the evidence for it is already sitting in plain sight.
Olympia Democrats are pushing this tax anyway. The question is whether they’ll own the consequences.
“I tell people, everyone’s got to compete, including cities. And for a city compete, of course, it’s quality of life, it’s your subways, it’s your hospitals, but it’s also individual taxes, estate taxes, corporate taxes, and it drives people out,” Dimon said on Fox and Friends. “So all you have to do is look at California versus Nevada, you know, New York versus Florida, and there’s a huge exodus taking place. It’s not good for the city, and people just make a mistake or just tax these people. But that’s the outcome.”
Dimon: Democrats calling tax hikes ‘moral’ are wrong — and people vote with their feet
Dimon was equally critical when addressing the moral framing Democrats routinely use to sell these tax hikes.
“Very often, people think they’re being moral by doing that, but they’re not,” he continued. “What they’re doing is they’re hurting your own city. And unfortunately, people vote with their feet.”
Kilmeade noted that Dallas now has more residents than New York City. When pressed on politicians like Bernie Sanders, who insist daily that billionaires and millionaires don’t pay their fair share, Dimon was dismissive.
“I don’t know what he means by fair share. I’ve listened to that my whole life, and I don’t know what he means,” Dimon said. “I don’t think most American citizens believe that if we tax a trillion dollars more and sent it down to Washington DC, that the country be worse off. I think what they believe that money be given out to special interest groups and the friends of this politician, that politician. We need policy that drives growth, and that’s regulatory policy, I think immigration policy that we should have allowed more merit based and citizenship.”
Starbucks billionaire founder Howard Schultz announced his relocation to Florida before Ferguson even signed the bill — a data point Dimon’s argument doesn’t need to manufacture. The Citizen Action Defense Fund has already announced a lawsuit, arguing the tax violates the state constitution’s uniformity clause — a challenge former state Attorney General Rob McKenna is set to lead.
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