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Comment by steindavidb | Hacker News Reader

(for a single filer) at $100k income, this lowers the effective state income tax to 0.8%

at $200k income, this lowers the effective state income tax rate to 4.4%

New Hampshire is literally next door and has no income tax.

There's also no guarantee on the duration of this program. From their FAQ, it appears that it's renewed annually, so it would be very easy to dig in roots only to find out the program has been ended shortly after.

At the risk of going slightly political, if money is the reason for relocating there, I'm not sure I'd put much faith in it lasting given the elected officials for that state.

People in other areas don't respond very well to highly paid workers relocating to their neighborhoods and raising housing prices. I'd guess that as soon as this gets many people to move, sentiment turns and it vanishes.

You can build more houses.

That only scales to a point. Other side-effects of a larger population, like increased traffic, are harder to address than just building more houses.

That seems like less of a problem if all the new residents are working remotely though, yeah? There would of course be some new traffic, but it wouldn't be a huge mass of people commuting to the same place.

>"Other side-effects of a larger population, like increased traffic"

Remote workers don't commute though. Vermont's population has also been declining for years though and before that trend it was stagnant for decades[1]. Also if you've been to Vermont you know there's plenty of room to build there.

[1] https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/money/2016/12/29/v...

Some people prefer Vermont's landscape, culture and politics and might be willing to give up 0.8% of income tax savings.

Yup, at some point you consider, it's only $800 and maybe you're getting a lot for your money. Not to mention other factors in overall cost of living can totally swamp that $65/mo. You probably spend more on internet.

Isn't the fact this program exists at all a testament to people not preferring Vermont and having to be incentivized to go there?

I think it is a trial baloon, and arises out of a perception that maybe in the future there will be large numbers of such people.

It's been twenty years since I lived in southern NH and worked for a company in Vermont, but I don't remember a lot of differences in the landscape, or frankly the culture. Yes Vermont has a reputation for being liberal and progressive, and NH has a reputation for being the live free or shoot me place, but the reality on the ground, at least when I was there, was a lot less contrasting.

I think there's a material difference between southern new hampshire and most of vermont. Vermont in general is far more rural (outside of Burlington, Rutland) whereas the larger towns in southern new hampshire that are fast growing are basically now suburbs of boston.

So it that why the state leans progressive? Liberal transplants from Boston? For a state that seems to be mostly rural without a large city, it is amazing Bernie Sanders is the senator.

Maybe living rural doesn’t automatically make you regressive.

Vermonter here. The average Vermonter voted for a Socialist Senator, a Democratic Representative, and a Republican governor in the last election. The person tends to be much more important than the party.

Vermont was reliably Republican until there was the perception that the GOP had an evangelical social agenda. Vermonters are not against private expressions of faith, but they believe it is deeply personal and have no interest in being lectured on it by politicians.

>Liberal transplants from Boston

There's a lot of people from NYC that want to retire upstate but come to the realization that NYC has done a very thorough job turning the entire state into a dump and that the only way out is to move out of state.

However, as a sibling comment pointed out, even if you ignore transplants the people of Vermont tend to agree with the modern left on a certain set of social issues anyway.

This. Vermont and NH residents are much more concerned by property taxes and education funding. I do not love having to fill out yet another tax form for the state in VT, but the income tax is a rounding error compared to other expenses. Meanwhile, I live somewhere that other people come to vacation. It is paradise year round (with an exception for mud season).

>Meanwhile, I live somewhere that other people come to vacation. It is paradise year round (with an exception for mud season).

Those vacationers are going to permanently move to your "paradise" when they want to retire or start families and it will be a paradise no longer.

All are welcome, particularly if they want to start families. We could use many more young families with school age children.

We are an old state with a dropping population, hence why the government is trying to attract new residents. Seriously, grab your skis, get in the car and come on up; the more the merrier.

Sort of. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

New Hampshire has high property taxes and it collects the equivalent of income tax from employers.

> New Hampshire is literally next door and has no income tax.

Really?! Has New Hampshire finally gotten their act together and extricated themselves from the boot of the federal government? Or do you really mean that NH has a slightly lower income tax because nothing gets added to the federal one?

New Hampshire has other taxes. If you want to pay less in taxes find a state that spends less money.

https://ballotpedia.org/Total_state_government_expenditures

Per-capita, Vermont spends the 6th most; New Hampshire the 3rd least. Only Missouri and Florida spend less than New Hampshire.

This is a really good point. If you are after clean air, natural beauty, outdoor activity and the New England vibe you could just as easily live in New Hampshire and pay zero state income tax.

Also there are many parts of New Hampshire where commuting in to Boston is an option if your remote gig went away. Many people live in low tax New Hampshire and commute in to Boston or or other parts of Massachusetts.

>New Hampshire is literally next door and has no income tax

I wouldn't bank on it staying that way for long. Massholes from are moving in in droves and are voting for the kinds of politicians who would be very amenable to am income tax. Of course if they get an income tax all their other taxes will stay high too.

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