Reader James Smith asks a good question about Laura Smitherman's story last week, Maryland plan to tax millionaires backfires. It shouldn't be that hard, James says, to figure out how many previous Marylanders with a million in income moved out of the state vs. how many just saw their incomes go down.

I have a question about Laura's "Millionaire tax" story. You said that officials say there's no proof yet of millionaires packing up because of the excess tax. Wouldn't that be a very easy thing for the Comptroller's office to ascertain?

Just round up all of last year's tax returns from millionaires. There were only 3,000 right? Then look up this year's tax returns from every one of those people. It will be easy to divide the 2008 millionaires into 3 categories for 09:

Still millionaires, still paying Maryland tax No longer millionaires, still paying Maryland tax Return missing: no longer paying Maryland tax

How many people fall into that 3rd category? Subtract the number of people who died, and that (more or less) is your total of millionaires who have fled Maryland.

I'll ask comptroller Peter Franchot to get a breakdown.