Which Way Did They Go? Potential Practice Sites

I have a daughter with a newly minted diploma just move into a new "career" employment situation. Being responsibile parents, we helped her move. Now, keep in mind, we track demographic and psychographic data EVERY DAY but one NEW resourse I wanted to pass along to the new doctors out there is U-Haul's web site - www.uhaul.com.

It was a wakeup call when we compared the simple COST of moving from one location to another. The site allows you to enter two cities. It then calculates the cost of making the move. We began to see a pattern that was, well, chilling.

Take, for example, moving from Austin, TX to Los Angeles, CA, the van will cost $407. Going the other way will cost $1,831. The reason is that they want one-way vans in Los Angeles because they are losing population. Dallas to Philadelphia costs $633 versus $2,422 in the opposite direction.

United Van Lines released as study in January 2008 that showed the top destination states as being:

- North Carolina
- Nevada
- Alabama
- Oregon
- South Carolina

The top departure states are:

- Michigan
- North Dakota
- New Jersey
- New York
- Illinois

Is it possible that the reason for this has to do with Taxes? One could say that it is just a coincidence that the Big Departure States are also the Big Tax States. One really odd statistic involves South Dakota versus North Dakota. The weather and economics are about the same. But South Dakota, one of the top ten destination states, has no income tax while North Dakota, a major loser of population does.

To be honest, we don't believe that taxes should be the major reason why one considers one state over another for practice. Nevertheless, if you want an indication of potential of growth, look to State Income Taxes as a major indicator of the future.