The 30 richest counties in America

For decades, many of the richest Americans tended to be associated with the classic wealth strongholds of New York and California's Silicon Valley. Then came the emergence of new hubs in Florida, Texas and the Pacific Northwest. 

Today, the regions with the highest-earning people and, depending on the state, the steepest combined federal and state tax bills per taxpayer, are all over the map.

Part of that shift may stem from the retirement of aging investors to other locales. Or to significant time spent in sometimes-obscure areas for tax purposes. Or to recent growth in the number of millionaires. Around 6.98 million individuals in North America had financial assets of at least $1 million in 2020, an increase of 38% over 2008's level, Statista data shows.

As wealth advisors increasingly chase the most affluent clients, knowing where that coveted quarry lies can confer a competitive advantage. Large and mid-sized wealth management firms are increasingly merging their high-end private banking services with "lower-end" mass affluent offerings into single wealth management units designed to cater to a broader range of clients, according to consulting firm Accenture. The change comes as an estimated $84 trillion will pass to the next generation and nonprofits by 2045, according to Cerulli Associates.

Wealth management is still a highly fragmented market. Goldman Sachs, for example, manages more than $1 trillion for roughly 16,000 ultrahigh net worth clients, each with an average $60 million in assets. That's only 8% of the ultrahigh net worth market, the Wall Street bank said in a presentation last February.

Meanwhile, registered investment advisory firms are the fastest-growing segment of the industry, McKinsey says. Which means that rich clients are up for grabs, with Wall Street brokerages, private banks and independent firms all jostling for a piece of the action.

Where the clients are
Of course, the average taxable income of a given ZIP code or city can skew wildly if just one multibillionaire is in the mix. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, the 11th richest person in America last year with a net worth of $57.5 billion, according to Forbes, owns multiple mansions in California, Hawaii and Lake Tahoe, which straddles California and Nevada.

Scroll through the slideshow of the top 30 counties with the highest individual taxable income in the United States.

All data is from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and is based on federal income tax returns filed in 2021. All dollar figures refer to adjusted gross income, which is wages, dividends, capital gains, business income and retirement distributions, among other income, minus items such as alimony payments and contributions to a retirement account account. Counties are ranked in ascending order.