Commentary If you’re still wondering why raising the cap on the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction was important enough to Democrats to sacrifice their stated principles and resort to brazen gimmicks in order to fit it into the reconciliation bill, look no further than the latest release of the IRS’s tax migration data, covering tax years 2018-2019. The data shows that certain states continue to alienate their own tax bases with punitively high taxes and uncompetitive business tax environments. High-tax states are losing taxpayers at an alarming rate, while states that tax their residents less aggressively are benefiting from their fellow states’ loss. The five states that lost the most taxpayers are not exactly known for fiscal restraint. New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts lost, on net, 219,937 taxpayers and over $28 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI). On average, these states have a state-local effective tax rate of 11.8 percent. The five states …