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This paper analyzes the effects of i) top personal income tax rates, ii) top corporate income tax rates, and iii) movement costs on international migration. We provide evidence based on income tax events for the 28 EU Member States, Norway and Iceland from 1995–2017. We compare effects of taxation to those of migration costs identified through events in interstate occupational licensing. While descriptive evidence suggests that higher taxes in the origin state increase migration, we estimate the long-run tax elasticity of mobility to be precisely zero for personal income taxes and precisely zero for corporate income taxes. In contrast, adoption of freedom of movement for workers increases the migration probability by more than 50% the long run. We show that tax incentives matter in interaction with lower migration costs but not on their own. This suggests that regulation of professions is much more important than taxation when individuals decide where to locate and that the massive tax incentives in Eastern European states could not slow down the talent drain.
