By Ben Geier | SmartAsset
The number of Americans pulling in seven figures a year is on the rise. IRS data shows that less than three in 1,000 taxpayers earned over $1 million in 2018, up from less than two in 1,000 back in 2013. Those who have the good fortune of clearing the $1 million mark in annual income, or those looking to be strategic about reaching this threshold, may find it useful to consult a professional financial advisor. SmartAsset wanted to find out where millionaires are growing the fastest, so we identified the states with the largest increases in million-dollar earners.
To do this, we compared the number of tax returns filed by people earning at least $1 million in 2013 with the total in 2018. For details on our data sources and how we put all the information together to create our final rankings, check out the Data and Methodology section below.
This is the second time SmartAsset has crunched data on million-dollar earners. Here’s the link to the first study.
Key Findings
- Only one state saw a decrease in million-dollar earners. Between 2013 and 2018, the number of tax returns filed by million-dollar earners increased in every state and the District of Columbia except for one – North Dakota. The total number of North Dakotan seven-figure tax returns fell 8.49% over those five years. In fact, there is only one other state where this figure didn’t rise by more than 20% in that time – Oklahoma, which saw an increase of just 12.38%.
- The biggest fortunes are out West. Eight of the top 10 states in our study are located in the West, per Census Bureau designations. Million-dollar earners in Washington, Utah, Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii and Nevada nearly doubled from roughly 26,000 in 2013 to almost 51,100 in 2018. The only geographical outliers in the top 10 are North Carolina and South Carolina. Both states almost doubled their millionaires in five years from roughly 8,600 in 2013 to more than 15,900 in 2018.
