Here’s the lede from a Bloomberg article about rich people trying to avoid taxes in New York City:
At New Jersey’s Teterboro and Long Island’s Islip airports, dozens of private jets destined for Florida take off at times such as 11:42 p.m. or 11:54 p.m.
Over at JFK, a regular flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, arrives at a seemingly purposeful time: about 15 minutes after midnight.
Meanwhile, tax attorneys tell stories of clients idling in their luxury SUVs near the New Jersey entrance to the George Washington Bridge shortly before 12 a.m., waiting for the clock to turn before crossing the state line to New York.
There’s a threshold on the number of days you can live in NYC in terms of tax status (the over/under is something like 184 days).
Taxes are so high in NYC that the ultra-rich could be saving millions by living in a lower-tax state like Florida. The problem is these people still want to be in the Big Apple for business or personal reasons.
So they go to great lengths to avoid exceeding the allotted number of days.
James Stewart wrote a story in The New Yorker several years ago about the lengths famed hedge fund manager Julian Roberton went through to avoid NYC tax status:
This was nearly a full-time job. One of Robertson’s assistants, Julie Depperschmidt, scheduled his appointments and maintained a contemporaneous computerized record of his whereabouts, carefully distinguishing between “NYC days” and “non NYC days.” Different colored boxes indicated confirmed and anticipated non-New York City days. Whenever the combined number fell below a hundred and eighty-three, she advised him to add more non-New York City days to his schedule. She said that she reminded him “ad nauseam” about what he needed to do to reach a hundred and eighty-two
