Tax an individual enough and they will vote with their feet, warned JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in his annual shareholder letter on Monday.
Dimon’s already making the move for JPMorgan Chase by employing more people in his Dallas office than in the company’s New York City headquarters. The banker added that the trend will only continue. Over the past decade, JPMorgan has reduced its New York City headcount from 30,000 to 24,000, while expanding its Texas ranks from 26,000 to 32,000. Dimon acknowledged that New York remains a strong hub for financial talent, but said high costs are one of the firm’s biggest challenges.
“No city or company or country has a divine right to success,” wrote the CEO in his annual shareholder letter. “People like to make this a moral or loyalty issue, but it is not.”
Dimon framed the issue not as politics, but as basic economics. “Companies need to remain competitive in this very competitive, fast-moving world. Higher taxes mean lower returns on capital and less competitiveness by their nature.”
He also drew a comparison to New York in the 1970s, when “nearly half of the 125 Fortune 500 companies based in New York City left.” While mergers played a role during that era’s surge in dealmaking, Dimon argued that “the price of doing business in New York City accounted for most” of the departures. The exodus of major employers contributed to the city’s fiscal crisis and near-bankruptcy in 1975, eroding its tax base.
The 2026 exodus isn’t limited to JPMorgan. Wells Fargo opened a new 850,000 square-foot campus in 2025 in Texas and Goldman Sachs is developing a $500 million dollar campus in Dallas’ Victory Park. The influx of financial firms has earned the city the nickname “Y’all Street.”
Dimon warned that the trend is likely to accelerate, potentially worsening an already fragile moment for New York City. While he did not mention him by name, his comments come as newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani advocates for higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations. Less than a month into office, Mamdani floated raising property taxes to address what he described as a multibillion-dollar budget gap comparable to the Great Recession. He has also pushed Governor Kathy Hochul to raise the corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% and add a 2% tax on incomes above $1 million.
When Mamdani won his election, Dimon opened the communication lines by calling the newly elected mayor. Previously, Dimon called Mamdani’s free buses and rent freezes “the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.”
Mamdani has previously told reporters that when he goes into meetings with business leaders, he keeps an open mind. “I go into each of these meetings knowing what I know, knowing what I believe, and interested in what I can also learn from each and every one of the people who have made the city what it is.”
So far, however, there is little indication that the business community’s concerns about higher taxes have swayed him.
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