Tax Migration – One Way to Look at Population Change in Lane County
September 13, 2021 Migration is perennially a topic of concern for the economy and workforce. The fact that Lane County’s population has grown steadily over several decades is largely a positive contributor to employment, because population growth in general increases demand for local goods and services. People moving here also bring their skills, businesses, and human capital for the benefit of the local economy.That’s not to say that population growth doesn’t bring headaches. Many areas across the United States, in the west and south in particular, are dealing with the fallout of increased housing and congestion costs that result from sustained population growth.
So it’s important whenever we can learn something new about who is coming here, where they’re coming from, and what they bring with them. One of the most fascinating sources on migration comes from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Unsurprisingly, the IRS knows a lot about people’s taxes, and their Tax Migration Statistics track the tax returns filed one year in one county and a different county the next.
These data are not a perfect picture of migration. Not everyone files a tax return every year. Certain types of migration to Lane County, such as students, are particularly likely to be undercounted. The most recent data available is from 2018-2019, so none of this captures the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. However, as an administrative dataset, Tax Migration Statistics captures the entirety of the counted category, and so unlike a survey does not come with margins of error.

The data is also available by county of origin and destination. The tables below show the top inflow and outflow locations for net migration with Lane County.
Seven of the top ten inflow counties are in California. That’s not much of a surprise – there’s been a substantial flow of Californians to Oregon for many years, and as the largest state in the U.S. the impact of that is easy to feel. Notice too that we have high net flows with Jackson County (Medford) and “other flows” from the Midwest and Northeast.

Lane County sends the most out-migrants to other areas of the state, primarily to the Willamette Valley, Portland Metro or Central Oregon. We tend to have positive inflow from Southern Oregon and the coast. We also send more migrants to larger western metros, like Seattle, Vancouver (WA), Salt Lake City, and (not on this list) Reno and Boise.
