After Florida, Texas and Arizona, North Carolina is attracting the most wealth in the country: $30.06 billion in annual adjusted gross income (AGI) between 1992 and 2014, according to a recent data map.
But not all counties are seeing green.
Cumberland, Onslow and Durham lead a handful of counties that lost more wealth than they gained, with losses of $1.6 billion, $756.08 million, and $317.47 million, respectively. At the opposite end, Wake, Mecklenburg and Union counties gained the most wealth, each reeling in $2.6 billion.
The numbers come from Travis H. Brown’s How Money Walks: How $2 Trillion Moved Between the States, and Why It Matters, a map that uses U.S. Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service data to show how wealth moved across state and county lines from 1992 to 2014. Money and people migrated overwhelmingly in favor of better small-business climates: The states with no income taxes (such as Texas and Florida) attracted the most wealth, while those with higher income tax rates (such as New York and California) saw the greatest losses.
Although much of the wealth lost by Cumberland, Onslow and Durham went to other counties within the state, South Carolina absorbed significant income from its sister to the north—$1.85 billion, to be exact. Until this year, North Carolina ranked several places behind its southern counterpart in the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index, settling in 44th place..
North Carolina made the biggest jump in all of Tax Foundation history as a result of this year’s tax reform, jumping from No. 44 to No. 16 in the 2015 State Business Tax Climate Index. With a newly enacted single-bracket income tax rate of 5.8 percent, the state can expect to see this wealth migration trend continue.
Here are the five counties losing the most wealth in North Carolina:
1. Cumberland County lost $1.6 billion in annual AGI and lost 16,720 residents
2. Onslow County lost $756.08 million in annual AGI and lost 15,477 residents
3. Durham County lost $317.47 million in annual AGI and gained 26,204 residents
4. Wayne County lost $193.02 million in annual AGI and lost 3,212 residents
5. Edgecombe County lost $145.18 million in annual AGI and lost 6,553 residents
