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Comment by unnouinceput | Hacker News Reader

Quote: "With a net worth of $134.7B, Musk recently surpassed Bill Gates as the second-richest person in the world, and he's on track to earn more than $50 billion in stock options. If he remained in California, he’d be facing income taxes on the profits when he exercises them. In Texas, there is no income tax. "

Rest is blah blah, this right there is the real reason for such a move. Can't blame the man either, I'll do the same in his shoes.

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He benefits from government policies like the one for EV credit, and the one where companies have to buy carbon credits. Then when its time to contribute back its time to move.

I wouldn't.

Being worth $120B Vs $150B isn't a material difference. At that level, I would say "California was good to me, I leveraged the ecosystem there and the state's generous tax subsidies for my product. I'm ok paying them what I owe."

So the state of California loaned him money and he hasn't paid it back? Otherwise he doesn't owe anything.

It really is when you're the kind of person who routinely builds multi-billion dollar companies. You're talking about capital for several more moonshots.

Two kids talking. "If you had 1 million, would you give me half? Yes. If you had a bicycle, would you let me ride it from time to time? Yes. If you had an apple, would you share it with me? No. But why? Because I do have an apple."

I would think being a billionaire, there isn't significant difference in quality of life living in California vs. Texas either. The "I'm ok paying them what I owe" also overlooks the public spats on Twitter and with re-opening the Fremont factory which got shutdown because of covid.

CA will still come after you for profits on options granted while you were a CA resident, even if you exercise after leaving CA.

There's federal income tax everywhere. He's saving quite a bit in state tax, not avoiding all income tax.

but why? I personally like Texas as a state more than California (terrain, weather, urban areas) but if I had that much money I wouldn't care if it was 80billion or 100 billion for God sakes how greedy can you be?

If I had to guess, he doesn't view the wealth as an end in and of itself. Rather, wealth is a means to achieve his stated goals: 1) to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy and 2) to make humans an interplanetary species. It's not too hard to imagine how these pursuits could benefit from an infusion of $xx billion.

No state income tax, but the property taxes in Texas are brutal. Typical sales taxes as well.

That's okay. After he makes his money he can move back to California and pay lower property and sales taxes.

On the Joe Rogan podcast he has said he rents now.

Yep I was going to add this. It sounds like he doesn't care if he has 10 huge houses or not and renting works just fine for him. Although he should thinking about hedging with some real estate, but I guess he probably already does that :)

I gather that he's not really the kind of person to "hedge". He multiple times has gone "all in" on his businesses.

And honestly, once you have hundreds of billions of dollars across multiple companies, do you really need to hedge?

Probably not, you can easily sell off enough stocks even in a crash to be set for life (and probably multiple familial generations after you)

Unless he buys a really big house he will enjoy the regressive nature of property and sales taxes.

On mars there are no taxes of any kind.

Except that the man himself made some comments to let others know he is not happy with California not bending over backwards to his whim.

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