Misleading Article On Taxes From Geekwire

Geekwire graced its home page with a surprisingly propagandistic headline, “Report: Las Vegas is an attractive bet for Washington State millionaires fleeing wealth taxes.”

Given that once you add up the millionaires migrating in to the millionaires migrating out, there is virtually no evidence that millionaires on-net migrate to avoid taxes, this piqued my curiosity. “What is this ‘report?’ New evidence to the contrary? Some sort of white paper detailing something new?”

Nope. 

The “report” is a story about a few rich people in Las Vegas complaining about Washington State Taxes, and a real estate agent who says he has had rich clients from Washington buy some houses from him.

That’s it. 

No mention of the continuous and robust findings that millionaire migration for tax advantages is largely mythic. 

And although the silly string of anecdotes in the Bloomberg article is misleading, at least it quotes from one person pushing back–Senator Noel Frame–who notes that these stories are just anecdotes. The Geekwire article skips even that! 

Now, we could be extremely generous with Geekwire in interpreting their words: “report” could merely mean “a reporter wrote about some people’s complaints” instead of “some sort of formal findings.” “Washington State millionaires fleeing wealth taxes” doesn’t have to imply that, “on-net, millionaires are leaving Washington State, or leaving because of taxes” - it could just be a reference to the whiny guys complaining in the story.

But that is not how the story reads. And in fact it closes with, “As somebody who’s working on economic development, to see somebody shoot themselves in the foot like that, it makes me cry a little bit,” Saling said. “But at the same time, it’s a hell of an opportunity for us.”

Geekwire, you can do better.

Next time, please don’t call a few people complaining a “report.” 

And even more important: next time you quote someone making claims about how taxes impact migration, I’d suggest you do your job to look up the facts to find out if their claim is truthful and include that in your story.