On Friday The Guardian uncovered that Steve Bannon was registered to vote at a residence in Florida where he does not in fact live. In response to that story, Bannon moved his registration to the home of business associate and sometime Breitbart contributor Andy Badolato, also in Florida. That’s curious since, again, Bannon doesn’t seem to live in Florida or maintain even a nominal residence there. If he gets dinged for being registered to vote in a state he doesn’t live in, why switch to another address in the same state? Perhaps there’s some home he lives in in Florida that I haven’t heard about. But if he does, why is he registering to vote at the house of Andy Badolato?
I asked someone familiar with Bannon where he actually lived. I’m told he has a loft in New York City and a condo he co-owns in Los Angeles. When he’s in DC he stays at a place the Breitbart crew refers to as the ‘Breitbart Embassy’, actually a townhouse owned by an Egyptian businessman.
Now I got interested in this when I heard from TPM Reader MC who noted the possibility that this isn’t actually a voting issue but rather a tax issue.
California and New York are both high income tax states, actually some of the very highest in the country. DC is a high income tax jurisdiction. (When I say ‘high’, I’m of course speaking of relative terms vis a vis other states.) New York City has its own additional income levy. So from a tax perspective, if you’re rich, New York City is a particularly pricey place to live.
You can see the state breakdown in this chart from the Tax Foundation. These are the three places Bannon appears to ‘live’ in any real sense: Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC.
I’ve seen no reports that Bannon actually ‘lives’ in Florida, thus the issue with the voter registration. Again, if he has a house in Florida where he lives, why not register to vote there?
But remember, Florida is one of the handful of states with no income tax. For a wealthy individual, paying state or jurisdictional income in any of those three places is a significant amount of money. Florida is a real cost savings.
So does Bannon pay income tax in any of the states or cities where he actually seems to live? Or does he ‘live’ in Florida for tax purposes and pay no state income tax at all?
