Income Tax and the Residential Mobility of Top Income Earners: evidence from US and UK Households in Switzerland

We provide quasi-experimental evidence on the income tax-induced residential mobility of foreign high-income households living in Switzerland by exploiting the differential tax treatment of UK and US households. While the two groups are similar in terms of non-tax sorting preferences, US households are effectively insulated from Swiss income taxation due to the US worldwide income tax system. Thus, they provide the control group for the UK households, our treatment group. Comparing the residential choices of the two groups within a forty-five-minutes commuting zone of Zurich, we robustly find a residential location elasticity with respect to the net-of-tax rate of around eight. This estimate captures the ‘pure’ income tax effect on residential choice, not being downward biased by non-tax location incentives (that positively correlate with income taxes) and, for instance, by coordination costs between job and residential choices.