April 15 is the only day the federal debt goes down. For the rest of the year, it’s business as usual, including deficits and borrowing approaching a $37 trillion debt. But on this one day, Americans file their taxes, send off their payments, and fund a system many no longer trust. And five years after COVID-19 first shut down American cities, more people than ever are asking: What are we really paying for?
Tax Day 2025 reveals a truth that’s become impossible to ignore: for millions of Americans, paying high state and local taxes no longer feels worth it. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just disrupt our lives; it exposed how little many governments deliver in return for the taxes they collected. And once people saw that clearly, they took action.
The post-COVID migration wasn’t just about sunshine or square footage, it was about value. In New York City, top earners face a combined state and local income tax rate of nearly 15 percent, 11 percent from state income tax and 4 percent from city income tax, the highest in the country. On the West Coast, California’s state income tax reaches 12 percent, plus one of the highest sales taxes in the nation at a staunch 7.25 percent. These taxes were tolerated when city living came with strong public services, infrastructure, and job opportunities. But during COVID, that deal fell apart.
Beginning in 2020, the repeated phrase, “Two weeks to flatten the curve” echoed on every media outlet. Dr. Jerome Adams, then US Surgeon General, laid out the case that the US can either mitigate the spread like South Korea or face high mortality rates like Italy. On March 17, 2020, he stated, “Fifteen days, you can do anything for 15 days. Stay at home as much as possible, limit the spread, we do not want to look like Italy does two weeks from now.”
Two weeks turned into months, which turned into years.
Public schools stayed closed for months. Subways ran empty but still drained public funds. Between 2019 and 2020, the focus on lockdowns proved ineffective, as the murder rate rose 30 percent. Sanitation departments in major cities faced new obstacles in managing the growing amounts of trash left on the curb. State bureaucracies expanded while basic services deteriorated. People looked around and realized they were being taxed like everything was working, while everything was breaking.
To make matters worse, what people saw wasn’t just failure, but favoritism. Americans were told they couldn’t visit elderly relatives, attend funerals, or gather for Independence Day or Thanksgiving. But mass protests following the death of George Floyd were organized with the vocal support of prominent politicians, ranging from Nancy Pelosi to Kamala Harris. In city after city, many of these protests turned into riots and widespread unrest, all while media outlets insisted they were “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.” Meanwhile, small business owners were fined millions of dollars for opening during the pandemic, and many faced penalties for attending Church, weddings, and house parties. In 2020, trust in institutions didn’t just erode, it collapsed. Instead of enduring it, many left for greener pastures.
The world’s largest podcast host, Joe Rogan, left California for Austin, Texas. Elon Musk followed suit, moving Tesla’s HQ to Austin. California was not the only state facing a brain drain. Since 2020, New York has lost ten billionaires — including Carl Icahn and Daniel Och — a blow to a state that leans heavily on the wealthy to pay for services. The top 1% of taxpayers cover 42% of New York’s tax revenue, and billionaires face the highest rate: a staggering 14.8%.
Och and Icahn were not outliers but high-profile examples of a much larger movement. Millions of Americans did the same, quietly relocating to states like Florida and Texas, where the state income tax is zero and the sense of freedom runs higher.
Between 2020 and 2024, Florida added over 1.6 million residents, while Texas gained more than 2 million. Meanwhile, New York and California saw population declines. For the first time in over a century, California’s population shrank. Nationally, both Texas and Florida gained seats in the House of Representatives.
During this period, Americans began to rethink their relationship to government and especially to taxes. Once seen as a civic duty, taxes are now increasingly viewed as a transaction. And like any transaction, people want value in return.
Taxes and Americans have a long, winding history. Benjamin Franklin famously said that “nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Adding his two cents a century later, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. offered his view of the bargain: “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” For generations, Americans accepted that bargain, grudgingly or not, because the system, though imperfect, seemed to function.
At the other end of the spectrum, libertarian economist Murray Rothbard put it bluntly: “Taxation is theft.” For years, that sentiment lived on the margins. But when Americans were locked down, masked up, and still forced to fund broken systems, the idea struck differently. The feeling wasn’t just that people were paying too much, it was as if they were being robbed.
In that void, where trust collapsed and institutional legitimacy eroded, a new idea was born—albeit five years later. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) didn’t emerge despite bureaucracy. It emerged due to its poor handling of taxpayer money in a time of crisis. Citizens looked toward the federal government for support and were given mandates to always stay six feet apart. This illusion of safety was not even backed by science. Dr. Fauci, then Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, later admitted, “It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance.”
Altogether, citizens were forced to pay for a government that gave them little in return, neither security, nor dignity, nor even consistency.
DOGE is the natural evolution of post-COVID disillusionment. A new agency born from the public’s rising awareness of government overreach and systemic failure. It represents a growing consensus that the government must be held accountable. And it’s no longer a fringe idea.
In February, a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll showed that 72 percent of Americans support an agency focused on cutting government waste. Additionally, a Gallup poll from last year found that 54 percent of Americans believe the federal government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient.”
For decades, politicians assumed residents would complain but ultimately put up with it. The draconian laws of the pandemic changed all that. Americans are more mobile, more skeptical, and more conscious of what they are funding. They’re no longer afraid to uproot their lives if it means greater freedom, efficiency, and dignity. The cities and states that lost residents have a choice: defend broken systems, or start competing on services, on governance, and yes, on taxes. Because the old tax bargain is over.