Who Moved to South Florida: IRS County Migration Data, Tax Years 2022 to 2023

Every South Florida migration headline you have read this year traces back to one of two things: a moving-company press release, or a state-level population estimate. Neither one tells you how much money moved, and neither one works at county level. The federal record that does both is published once a year by the IRS, sits in a plain CSV file, and almost nobody in this business opens it.

This page opens it. What follows is the full county-to-county picture for Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach from the most recent file the IRS has published, which covers the move between tax year 2022 and tax year 2023. Every figure below comes out of that file. You can download the derived table at the bottom and check any number against the original.

What the IRS Migration File Actually Measures

The IRS builds this file by matching individual income tax returns across two consecutive years. If the address on your 2023 return sits in a different county from the address on your 2022 return, you are counted as a migrant, and your return is filed under the county you moved to and the county you came from.

Three columns carry the data, and confusing them is where most public reporting goes wrong:

• Returns. One filed tax return, which usually means one household. This is the number people mean when they say "how many people moved," and it is not a person count.
• Exemptions. A rough proxy for individuals, counting the filer, a spouse and dependents. This is the closest thing the file has to a headcount.
• Adjusted gross income. The total AGI reported on those returns, in thousands of dollars. This is the column that gets ignored, and it is the one that matters for a housing market.

The file is lagged. The most recent one the IRS has published as of September 2026 is the 2022 to 2023 pair, so anyone quoting it as current-year data is wrong. It is the most recent federal record of who actually moved, which is a different and more useful claim.

All Three Counties Lost Households and Gained Money

Here is the finding that runs against almost every South Florida story published in the last two years. Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach all had a net outflow of tax returns. All three had a net inflow of income.

Read those last two columns together. The region gave up 28,966 tax returns, roughly 54,761 people once you count exemptions, and still ended $3.83 billion of annual income ahead. That only happens when the arriving household earns far more than the departing one, which is exactly what the file shows in every one of the three counties.

Miami-Dade: 43,906 Returns In, 65,305 Out, $484 Million Net Income

Miami-Dade has the widest headcount gap of the three counties and the narrowest income gap. It lost 21,399 tax returns on net, which is the number that generates the "everyone is leaving Miami" stories, and it still finished $484.0 million of AGI ahead.

The arithmetic behind that is simple. The average inbound return carried $127,200 of adjusted gross income. The average outbound return carried $78,100. Every household that leaves is replaced by roughly 0.67 of a household with 1.63 times the income.

Where that income came from is more specific than the usual narrative. The single largest out-of-state flow into Miami-Dade by return count was New York County, New York, with 1,445 returns carrying $516.8 million, an average of $357,600 each. The largest by income was Cook County, Illinois: only 739 returns, but $525.5 million, which works out to $711,100 per return. Los Angeles County sent 1,049 returns at $228,200 each. Suffolk County, Massachusetts, which is Boston, sent 289 returns at $408,400 each.

Foreign inflow to Miami-Dade was 1,063 returns carrying $105.2 million. That number is smaller than most Miami readers expect, and the reason is a definitional limit in the file rather than a fact about immigration. See the method section below before quoting it.

Broward Is the Region's Internal Clearing House

Broward's numbers look like a county doing something different from its two neighbors. It received more returns than either of them, 52,307, and the largest single source was not New York or Chicago. It was Miami-Dade, which sent Broward 17,471 returns carrying $1.25 billion.

The flow runs in both directions and it does not balance. Broward sent Miami-Dade 10,482 returns and received 17,471, a net gain of 6,989 households from its southern neighbor. It sent Palm Beach 7,488 and received 5,681, a net loss of 1,807 to the north. Broward is where Miami-Dade households go when they price out, and it is where they stop before Palm Beach.

• Broward net AGI gain: $331.8 million, the smallest of the three counties.
• Average inbound return: $90,700. Average outbound return: $75,400. A 1.20 ratio, the tightest in the region.
• Largest out-of-state flows by returns: Kings County NY (828), Queens County NY (745), Los Angeles County CA (548), New York County NY (506), Cook County IL (476).
• Highest-income single origin: Middlesex County, Massachusetts, 210 returns carrying $119.1 million, or $567,000 per return.

If you want the plainest illustration of the two-speed market I keep writing about, it is that Middlesex number sitting in the same column as the 828 returns from Brooklyn. Broward absorbs a broad middle-income flow and a very narrow ultra-high-income flow at the same time, and its average hides both.

Palm Beach County Took In $3.02 Billion Net, the Largest of the Three

Palm Beach is the outlier, and by a distance. It received $7.10 billion of adjusted gross income and sent out $4.09 billion, for a net gain of $3.02 billion. That single county accounts for 78.7 percent of the entire three-county net income gain, on 29.4 percent of the inbound returns.

The average inbound Palm Beach return carried $177,200 against $98,600 going out, a ratio of 1.80. No other county in the region is close. The origin list explains why:

Eight of those nine are the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Chicago corridor. That is not a retirement pattern and it is not a remote-work pattern. It is a wealth-transfer pattern, and it lands almost entirely in one county.

Where South Florida's Leavers Actually Went

The outbound side is where the headcount loss becomes readable. Very little of it leaves Florida. Most of it moves up the coast or across the state.

• Miami-Dade out: Broward 17,471, Palm Beach 2,734, Lee County 2,131, Orange County 2,072, Hillsborough County 1,626.
• Broward out: Palm Beach 7,488, Miami-Dade 10,482, St. Lucie County 2,072, Orange County 2,059, Hillsborough County 1,069.
• Palm Beach out: Broward 5,681, St. Lucie County 3,326, Miami-Dade 1,755, Martin County 1,407, Orange County 1,109.

St. Lucie and Martin counties taking 4,733 returns out of Palm Beach alone is the affordability line drawn on a map. The same is true of Lee County pulling 2,131 out of Miami-Dade. These are households moving to where the same money buys more, and the income averages on those outbound flows sit between $45,000 and $129,000, well under what is arriving from the Northeast.

Gerardo's Read: What This Changes About Pricing a Condo

When a buyer tells me everyone is leaving Miami, I ask which column they read, and it is always the return count. My position on this has not changed since the 2026 core data started landing: a market where 28,966 households leave and $3.83 billion of income arrives is not a shrinking market, it is a re-pricing market, and those two things look identical in a population chart and opposite in a price chart.

The practical consequence I work with every week is that the demand curve for South Florida has separated by price band. The broad market is competing for a smaller pool of households, which is why the middle of the market sits flat and why months of supply keeps climbing on resale inventory. The top of the market is competing for an income pool that grew, and it is the only part of the market where a seller still sets the terms.

So when I am advising on a pre-construction contract, the county matters more than it used to. A Palm Beach unit is being priced into an income stream that grew by $3.02 billion in one filing year. A Broward unit is being priced into a $331.8 million gain that is mostly internal reshuffling from Miami-Dade. Those are not the same bet and they should not carry the same deposit schedule assumptions.

Method, Scope and What This File Cannot Tell You

The source is the IRS Statistics of Income migration data county-to-county file, inflow and outflow, tax years 2022 to 2023, downloaded and parsed on September 23, 2026. Population denominators, where used, come from the US Census Bureau data portal. The IRS data is a United States federal government work in the public domain, which is why the derived table below can be republished here without a license question.

Four limits belong on the record, and each one changes how a figure should be quoted:

• It is lagged by roughly two years. The 2022 to 2023 pair is the most recent published. It is not a 2026 reading and must never be presented as one.
• It counts filed returns, not people. A household that does not file, files late enough to miss the processing window, or cannot be matched across both years is invisible. Exemptions are the nearest thing to a person count and they are still a proxy.
• Foreign inflow is badly understated by design. The foreign category captures returns filed from a foreign address in the prior year, so it largely means US filers coming home. A first-time arrival with no prior-year US return is not in it. The 1,063 foreign returns into Miami-Dade are not a count of international arrivals and should never be cited as one.
• Small flows are suppressed. The IRS aggregates county pairs below its disclosure threshold into regional residual rows labelled "Other flows." Those residuals are real income and real households, they just have no named origin, so any single-county list understates the total.

What the file cannot tell you: why anyone moved, what they bought, whether they bought at all, or whether they stayed. It records an address change on a tax return and the income attached to it. Everything past that is inference, including mine.

Download the Derived Table

The full derived table is published as a CSV: three counties, inflow and outflow, the all-origins total plus the top 15 named counterparties by income for each direction, with returns, exemptions, AGI and average AGI per return.

• South Florida IRS county migration, tax years 2022 to 2023 (CSV, 96 rows)
• Original source file: IRS SOI Tax Stats, US population migration data

Last verified September 23, 2026 against the IRS file listing, which had no year later than the 2022 to 2023 pair. The next scheduled check is September 2027, or sooner if the IRS publishes a new year.

Related Resources

• South Florida housing market data: prices, inventory and the luxury tier
• Miami months of supply, the resale side of this demand picture
• Miami foreign buyer flow report, where international money actually lands
• Relocating to Miami: establishing Florida tax domicile
• South Florida condo pipeline by construction stage
• Miami condo delivery calendar 2026 to 2030
• Brickell luxury condos, the corridor most of this income buys into
• South Florida Development Watch
• Every Miami luxury building LuxuryDade tracks

Gerardo Gonzalez

Licensed Real Estate Agent at Compass | LuxuryDade