Wealthy New Yorkers thinking of fleeing the city now that Zohran Mamdani has been elected mayor should know that state tax auditors will have a list of probing questions, each a bit more invasive than the last.

Where did you spend your holidays?

Where did you stay after returning from an overseas trip?

Where are your dog’s ashes?

Where is your burial plot?

To avoid New York’s high state and city income taxes — which can climb to nearly 15 percent, the highest combined rate in the nation — it is not enough to simply file a change of address or spend more than 183 days of the year in another state, a common misconception. You really have to move — and a lot more.

Even then, a high earner filing a tax return from a new address could attract auditors’ attention, and just one misstep can cause an audit defense to fall apart or become a lot more challenging. Like when a wealthy man moved to Florida but returned to New York to go fly-fishing. Eager for a discount on his fishing license (which currently costs $50 for nonresidents and $25 for residents), he checked the box indicating he was a New York resident.

“The auditor has just one question: Were you lying then, or are you lying now?” said Mark S. Klein, a tax lawyer at Hodgson Russ who represented the man. (He ultimately won the case but owed more in legal fees than he had saved on the license.) “I would suggest that’s a very bad way to start an audit.”

For decades in New York City, pundits, business leaders and the uber-wealthy have warned of a looming exodus among its richest residents — driven, they claim, by the city’s progressive politics or the suggestion of tax increases.