text: David Tepper's gain is New Jersey's loss. 
   
   The hedge fund billionaire, founder of Appaloosa Management, officially changed his tax residency and corporate headquarters from New Jersey to Florida. People close to Tepper say he made the move to be closer to his mother and sister, who live in Florida. 
   
   Yet it could also save him hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes that would have gone to New Jersey. 
   
   According to Institutional Investor's Alpha, Tepper has earned more than $6 billion over the past three years. Given that the top tax rate in New Jersey is 8.97 percent, his tax bill for the state over that time frame could have been more than $500 million. Of course, his real bill was likely much lower, given charitable deductions and other accounting treatments. Yet he still likely paid in the nine figures to the state of New Jersey over those years. 
   
   ||||| Billionaire David Tepper is moving from New Jersey to Florida, and much to New Jersey's dismay, he is taking his tax burden with him. 
   
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   New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (c.) delivers his budget at the Statehouse in Trenton, N.J., Feb. 16. Next year's budget may be impacted significantly by the departure of one of the state's richest citizens. 
   
   Billionaire David Tepper is moving from New Jersey to Florida this year — and so is his tax contribution to New Jersey, which is so large the move threatens his former home's state budget. 
   
   The outsize dent one change of address can make sheds light not only on how much money America's wealthiest citizens can move, but also on how much the "1 percent" contributes to a functioning government. 
   
   Mr. Tepper, a highly successful hedge-fund manager, registered to vote in Florida last October, according to Bloomberg. He listed a condominium in Florida as his new residential address and moved his business, Appaloosa Management, to the Sunshine State. And the New Jersey legislature took notice. 
   
   "We may be facing an unusual degree of income-tax forecast risk," testified Frank Haines, a budget officer with New Jersey's Office of Legislative Services, before a Senate committee Tuesday. 
   
   New Jersey's struggling state budget projections rely on income taxes for 40 percent of revenue, Bloomberg reported. To support this, the state levies the third-highest tax burden in the country, with a marginal income tax rate of almost 9 percent for top earners and an array of estate and inheritance taxes. 
   
   The Sunshine State, on the other hand, has one of the country's lowest tax burdens: it taxes neither personal income nor investments, and its corporate tax is 5.5 percent, all of which tempted Tepper to move south. 
   
   New Jersey's current predicament highlights both the stark income difference between America's rich and poor and the subtle side effects of trying to solve it through taxation. As The Christian Science Monitor's Olivia Lowenberg wrote in March: 
   
   While the gulf between the middle- and lower-class wages has held stable since 2000, the gap between the very wealthy and everyone else is expanding. While inflation-adjusted wages did grow in 2015, not every segment of the population felt the benefits. Wages for men in the top 90th and 95th percentiles of earners increased by 6.2 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively, even as wages stagnated or even dropped off for men in the bottom 60 percent of earners. Wages increased about 2.6 percent for median earners. 
   
   New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has been working with — and sometimes against — the state's legislature on ideas to solve both the economic stagnation of America's middle class and the state budget. During his run for president, he blamed the federal government for increasing income inequality by stagnating growth. 
   
   "The Fed's easy money policies and the president's anti-growth policies have made the rich even richer and made our middle class work longer and harder for less pay and less promise for the future," Governor Christie told New Hampshire voters. 
   
   Tepper's flight to the Sunshine State — and the New Jersey legislature's resulting woes — highlight both the economic puzzle and the perils of resolving it through increasing taxes. 
   
   "The tax burden doesn’t stick out — what really sticks out is the inadequacy of their pre-tax income. That's what's hurting middle-class families," Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould told the Monitor last month. 
   
   "I don’t think, as a share of people’s budget, that [tax cuts are] where the relief should come. We think about middle-class families that are struggling to pay for housing, childcare," she said. "We need to really think about increasing their wages." ||||| The decision by billionaire hedge-fund manager David Tepper to quit New Jersey for tax-friendly Florida could complicate estimates of how much tax money the struggling state will collect, the head of the Legislature’s nonpartisan research branch warned lawmakers. 
   
   Tepper, 58, registered to vote in Florida in October, listing a Miami Beach condominium as his permanent address, and in December filed a court document declaring that he is now a resident of the state. On Jan. 1, he relocated his Appaloosa Management from New Jersey to Florida, which is free of personal-income and estate taxes. 
   
   His move has state revenue officials on alert. 
   
   “We may be facing an unusual degree of income-tax forecast risk,” Frank Haines, budget and finance officer with the Office of Legislative Services told a Senate committee Tuesday in Trenton. 
   
   New Jersey relies on personal income taxes for about 40 percent of its revenue, and less than 1 percent of taxpayers contribute about a third of those collections, according to the legislative services office. A one percent forecasting error in the income-tax estimate can mean a $140 million gap, Haines said. 
   
   Tepper lived in New Jersey for more than two decades, initially as an executive at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where he helped run junk-bond trading during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He founded Appaloosa in 1993 and now has an estimated fortune of $10.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That ranked him as the wealthiest person in New Jersey. 
   
   New Jersey residents bear the country’s third-highest tax burden, according to the Tax Foundation in Washington. Along with the nation’s highest property taxes, it’s one of two states that levy both an estate tax on the deceased and an inheritance tax on their heirs. The income-tax rate for top earners is 8.97 percent. Democratic legislators have repeatedly passed a millionaire’s tax that would increase the levy to 10.75 percent, but Republican Governor Chris Christie has vetoed it each time.
target: – New Jersey, already struggling with its budget, could face a massive shortfall next year—all because one guy chose to move to Florida, Bloomberg reports. In fairness, that guy was the wealthiest man in the state. Hedge-fund manager David Tepper has an estimated worth of $10.6 billion, and after decades in New Jersey he's officially moved his residence and business operations to the Sunshine State. According to CNBC, people close to Tepper say he wanted to be closer to his mother and sister in Florida. But it also points out he stands to save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes by moving south. Thanks to New Jersey's 8.97% tax burden on its highest earners, Tepper likely paid nine figures in taxes—potentially more than $500 million—over the past three years. Unlike Tepper's old home, which had the third highest tax burden in the country, Florida has one of the lowest, the Christian Science Monitor reports. It has no personal-income or estate taxes. But Tepper's gain is New Jersey's loss. “We may be facing an unusual degree of income-tax forecast risk," New Jersey's budget and finance officer says regarding Tepper's move. The state gets about 40% of its revenue from personal-income taxes—a large chunk of which comes from the incredibly wealthy. Being off by even 1% in income-tax forecasts could mean a budget shortfall of $140 million. But all is not lost for the Garden State. Its population of tax-paying millionaires is continuing to rise, and it boasted the fourth highest number of millionaires in the country in 2015. (This house is available for those who want to move to New Jersey, but it comes with a stalker.)