According to IRS data obtained and reported on by The Oregonian, residents of Multnomah County, the county in which Portland sits, fled to such an extent as madness gripped the city and thugs from Antifa dominated it in 2020 and 2021 that the city lost a billion dollars in taxable revenue.
Reporting on that, The Oregonian claimed, “Multnomah County residents who moved away took more than $1 billion in income with them during the first year of the pandemic, as remote work allowed people to keep jobs in cities but live anywhere.”
Continuing, the same report added that the data was “released by the Internal Revenue Service” and that the data “gleaned from annual income tax returns provide the most detailed information available on where Americans are moving — and taking their money.”
And what that obtained data shows is that the flight of capital and income from Portland and the surrounding area has been substantial. Whether because of the Antifa and riots, work from home, or some combination thereof, the county lost about 14,257 taxpayers and their dependants between 2020 and 2021. The loss of net income, as a result of that flight, topped a billion dollars.
Further amplifying Portland’s problems is that the average income of those leaving the city is about fourteen percent higher than in 2019. Emphasizing that trend, state economist Josh Lehner said, “Clearly we do see a relative shift in incomes among migrants from 2019 to 2020. For Multnomah County specifically this pattern is different … the relative patterns of migration shifted noticeably, and skew more toward higher-income out-migration than in 2019.”
Watch the report on the county’s disastrous outmigration problem here:
Portland’s population decline from 2020 to 2022 was one of the worst in the country. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The drop of about 17,400 to 635,000 was the sixth largest decline among the 50 largest cities.” That trend continued and, in May, KPTV reported that Portland was “one of the fastest-shrinking U.S. cities.”
Outside of high taxes, which are reason enough to leave for many Americans, the reason why those from Portland might want to flee is obvious: crime leading to a declining quality of life. “Portland experienced a massive spike in its homicide rate from 2019 to 2021, recording a 207 percent increase. During that same timeframe, frequent ANTIFA riots were also occurring in the downtown area,” an article in Breitbart about the city of Portland’s crime problem reported.
Data indicating that crime problems might be the reason for the flight of big earners from Portland comes from the IRS, data from which showed that the most common destination for those who left was the suburbs, which have less of a crime problem than the big city.
“The tax return data indicate that many of the Multnomah County residents who left in 2020 and 2021 moved to nearby suburbs. Clackamas County was the top destination for people leaving Multnomah County, accounting for 10,785 people, or about 20% of all movers. Washington County and Clark County were also among the top destinations,” The Oregonian reported.
Here’s a video of the fighting in Portland:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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