What are property taxes like? Vancouver real estate is absurdly expensive compared to even SFBA from what I remember (although I was looking at London Properties), so the rate is on a really high base, too.

I'd be interested in an objective comparison of SF, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver from the perspective of a startup and ~10-20 developers making O($100k/yr) each. Maybe throw in Las Vegas or Austin, for the lowest possible US case, and someplace like Calgary for the cheapest Canadian case.

Superior Canadian immigration rules would seem to dominate if taxes are even within 50% of each other in some cases (founders or substantial early employees not being willing or able to work in the US), and would also dominate in cases like "gaming", anything privacy/anonymity based where US law was an issue, etc. I'm not sure how Canadian investment rules work (I know there's the weird R&D tax credit, and there were issues until recently with taxing or reporting gains).