Movers from Massachusetts to New Hampshire brought with them $5.95 billion in net adjusted gross income (AGI) from 2012-2023, IRS data show, representing a massive transfer of wealth from the high-tax Bay State to low-tax New Hampshire.
New Hampshire’s net personal income gain from Massachusetts movers grew tenfold from 2012-2019, then suddenly doubled to a new, higher baseline in 2020, IRS tax return data analyzed for the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy by the Pioneer Institute show.
Adjusted Gross Income is your taxable income after deductions. The $5.95 billion figure represents the net gain for New Hampshire after accounting for all relocations to and from both states. The chart below shows New Hampshire’s net AGI gain by year. The latest year available is 2023.
For 2023, the IRS tracked 6,594 tax returns filed in Massachusetts that had been filed the year before in New Hampshire, and 10,603 that had moved in the other direction, for a net gain of 4,009 for New Hampshire. (Tax returns can represent couples and families, so the number of individuals moving is higher than the number of returns.)
The difference in incomes of those movers was stark. The IRS tracked an outflow of $557,595,000 in AGI from New Hampshire to Massachusetts in 2023. But the flow in the other direction was nearly three times that, at $1.4 billion. The result was a net gain of $870,606,000 for New Hampshire.
In 2019, 10,014 tax returns were filed in New Hampshire that had been filed in Massachusetts the year before, representing a total AGI of $847,679,000. That same year, the IRS tracked 6,063 tax returns filed in Massachusetts that had been filed in New Hampshire the year before, for a total AGI of $420,913,000.
So from 2019-2023, the total AGI moving from New Hampshire to Massachusetts grew by 32%, most of that representing the effects of inflation, while the total AGI moving in the other direction grew by more than twice as much, at 66%.
The surge from 2019-2020 appears to have established a new baseline. Since 2020, New Hampshire has gained a net AGI of at least $860 million a year from Massachusetts movers.
The number of movers going in each direction increased by about 500 in 2023 vs. 2019. But the returns show a significant increase in the income of those relocating to New Hampshire, confirming that more higher-income individuals have been leaving Massachusetts for New Hampshire in the last few years.
How much Massachusetts’ millionaires tax, passed in 2022, and New Hampshire’s gradual elimination of its Interest & Dividends Tax (fully eliminated in 2025), affected the moves is worth further study. But the increase in higher-income residents moving from Massachusetts to New Hampshire in these years does suggest that the prospect of higher levels of taxation in one state vs. the other might have affected migration rates, at least as a component of overall cost of living considerations.
