Aren't paying taxes if you stay, aren't paying taxes if you leave.
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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You don't have to sell it to me I was already in
“Leave” as in claiming their primary residence is in Florida while spending all of their time in California.
California is pretty strict about taxing you if you spend too much time there.
I'm in Washington state (no state income tax) and have had colleagues who've spent a lot of time in California warned by payroll that they're approaching the limit on time before you're deemed a tax resident (maybe 180 days per year, but I'm not sure).
In particular, any part of a day spent in California counts as a whole day, as I understand it. So if you fly in on Monday evening, spend Tuesday and Wednesday, then fly back Thursday morning, it's 4 days.
California is pretty strict about taxing you if you spend too much time there.
In order for that to kick in, you need to be drawing salaried income, otherwise they have no means of tracking you. Salary is an insignificant component of most billionaires' income.
Puerto Rico does it right. In order to claim primary residence there you have to physically be there for something like 180 days of the year without any travel. States need to do that too.
I know Massachusetts has a law similar to this as well, though I don't remember the details. I think it's even something like you have to claim money that you make outside the state and taxes that you pay in other states so that the state can adjust your taxes accordingly. But there's definitely something about needing to live there for at least 6 months or something in order to claim primary residency.
180 uninterrupted days or 180 total? I think my state does 181 total
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I live in a regional hub in a red area. All the people who live in the surrounding counties split their time between shitting on the "big city" and spending all their time here without paying any taxes
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The ultra wealthy said the same thing about New York City, they aren't going anywhere.
They won’t leave. They’re just trying to scare idiots into voting for policies that only benefit the rich and their ilk.
they tried this with zohran in nyc, none left. RICH people wont live in red hellholes like kentucy, nebraska or alabama.
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Exactly they won’t move, this is like when people threaten to move if something happens, and when it does happens, nothing.
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We should hold a farewell party and hold them to it
how would one track these people down anyway, to give em a suprise party?
Ooo let's make it nationwide then
Earthwide 😏
Ah, so that’s why billionaires are all investing in space travel. Fuck you Earthlings, my primary residence is my space yacht.
Hopefully their launch vehicles will be shot down, as an example to others.
% of profits made in the state off standard pricing, tax the company. The company can choose to not sell their products in the state. If Google/Apple/whomever decides they don't want their products used in the state and lose 40m customers, that's their choice.
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Keep those evil fuckers running!
If you're rich beyond imagination, why nog pay taxes?
Because all they have left is hoarding wealth and the fear of losing some of it. They’ve become the movie or book trope of the withered miser who is completely consumed by greed and has nothing else. Unfortunately most of the real misers don’t get any comeuppance while the fictional ones do.
I think we've allowed the rich people dick measuring contest to go on for too long. All these guys care about is the imaginary number next to their name is higher than the other guys. Greed yes, but competition, game, sport, between psychos....also yes.
Liquidity issues.
For example, loads of elderly people in California own homes that have very low property taxes which were assessed decades ago. If their property values were re-assessed today they wouldn’t be able to afford the property tax and would have to sell their home and move (possibly flee the state).
Now that’s not the situation these billionaires are in. They aren’t tied up in a single house they’d have to sell. Their issue is that they’d have to sell a lot of stocks to pay a wealth tax, an event that could trigger a huge market drop in the price of those stocks.
You can be extremely asset-rich while being relatively cash-poor. I say relatively because these billionaires likely have millions in cash sitting around but that might not be enough to afford tens of millions in taxes every year (which must be paid in cash, not stocks).
I'm one of those people who's a bit asset-rich while not at all cash-rich. I'm not whining to anyone about it, that's the way I arranged things, and there were benefits to it as well as risks. I saw the tradeoffs and made my choices. I can always sell one of the properties if I need to, or take a bit more of a mortgage on it (my overall debt/equity is about 18%, so mortgaging is easy). But people with more are more able to pay, regardless of their asset-allocation choices. The whole "granny starving in a $3M house" story is a malicious crock of shit that only a fool would fall for.
And same with those billionaires. In fact, their asset allocation challenges don't mean a fucking thing to me. They're filthy rich due to a broken, crooked system. In a sane, healthy society there wouldn't be billionaires at all. So a correction is needed. They can take a haircut or they can face a much more extreme reckoning in the future. Up to them. And if they want to up sticks and move to Dallas, that's their choice too. They can go be parasites on a less aware host.
I’m not whining on their behalf, I’m warning that this approach to taxation will not hit the intended target. Billionaires whose assets are mostly concentrated in stocks have no reason to make California their primary residence. They can live anywhere in the world and if forced to they will do so.
If you want an effective tax on tech billionaires you should find a way to tax an asset they can’t move: intellectual property. That’s where all tech billionaires ultimately derive their wealth. I personally am against IP altogether, but I’ll take an IP tax as a consolation prize.
It goes without saying that land value tax is another tax on assets that can’t be moved. I also want to see LVT tried.
I’m not whining on their behalf, I’m warning that this approach to taxation will not hit the intended target. Billionaires whose assets are mostly concentrated in stocks have no reason to make California their primary residence. They can live anywhere in the world and if forced to they will do so.
Billionaires can already live anywhere and they continue to live in their chosen country. They continue to live where they live because they enjoy living there.
Sure, and I’m glad you can derive satisfaction from the idea of chasing them out of California, but if that’s all you’re hoping for from tax laws then you’ve set the bar too low!
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This How Money Works video talks about these hollow threats. In short, they probably would leave anyway.
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Taxes don't have to care where you live. If done properly, all that matters is where the assets are. You want to do more than $1B(or whatever number makes sense) of buisness in California? You need to create a California based subsidiary to handle it all. And share holders of that buisness pay tax on the value of those shares. Then it doesn't matter where Alphabet or Google or their CEOs are located.