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Derek Thomas: Don't try to confuse me with numbers, I feel that no one's leaving - don't you care about my feelings?

Organizers of anti-Trump "March for Science" forced to apologize for calling women "females". Emotions trump science. 

And they trump numbers and facts:

Connecticut Democrat activist insists that people aren't leaving the state to escape our estate and gift tax, despite what the numbers say.

Joseph Pankowski Jr., law partner with the Stamford-based firm Wofsey, Rosen, Kweskin & Kuriansky, said that Connecticut’s “trickle” of wealthy people relocating to New York will become a “deluge” if the estate tax exemption is not raised to match both the New York and federal exemption.

New York is raising its estate tax exemption to meet the federal standard by 2019. Pankowski warned that Connecticut will start lose more high income residents to New York because they can avoid Connecticut’s estate tax and still see grandchildren who remain in Connecticut.

The committee was considering several bills dealing with Connecticut’s estate and gift taxes. Sen. Martin Looney, D-New Haven, introduced a bill to raise Connecticut’s estate tax threshold to match the federal standard, while Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, has proposed bills eliminating the estate and gift taxes altogether.

Pankowski began his public hearing testimony by assuring the committee that he was politically left-leaning and supported numerous Democratic and Progressive issues.

However, he said that when Connecticut’s wealthier citizens leave for other states they take all their money with them, including any revenue that would be paid to the state in income and sales taxes, as well as philanthropic donations.

“For more than 25 years I have watched clients change their domicile to Florida to avoid the Connecticut estate tax,” Pankowski said. “Connecticut, of course, is the big loser whenever this has happened.”

Likewise, Kelly Galica Peck of Cummings & Lockwood in West Hartford, warned that wealthier residents will “vote with their feet” and that she regularly deals with the loss of clients to other states to avoid Connecticut’s estate and gift taxes.

“Connecticut has the ignominious distinction of being the only state in the nation with a gift tax,” Peck told the committee. “Most states over the past decade have eliminated their estate and gift tax because they have determined ultimately that it is bad fiscal policy.”

The estate tax and gift tax bills also drew testimony from the Connecticut Business & Industry Association because the taxes apply to business owners as well. The estate tax can make it difficult for even small business owners and farmers to pass on the business to their children.

But not everybody was enamored with the idea of raising the estate tax exemption. Derek Thomas, a fiscal policy fellow with Connecticut’s Voices for Children, denied that there was an outmigration trend in Connecticut and worried that revenue lost from the estate tax would hurt state services.

Data from the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Census Bureau, however, show otherwise. According to the IRS, Connecticut lost 27,541 people and $3.8 billion in adjusted gross income from 2011 to 2013.