[menssen]

Finance YouTuber Graham Stephen recently made a big deal out of moving from Los Angeles to Vegas because the tax savings more-or-less paid for a giant mansion in Vegas. (And because of some slightly cringey comments about not wanting to see so many homeless people, but that's not the editorial comment I'm trying to make right now.)

But, he's keeping his house in CA (for "weekends and vacations"), and he's building his studio in Vegas to be an exact replica of the old one.

So, yeah, charitably, "moving" for the highly wealthy does not really look anything like "moving" for anybody else.

Less charitably, it seems like a scam. In GS' case, nobody can tell where he's doing his work from, so "oh we spent too long at the beach on this 'vacation day,'" better stay here and film tomorrow's episode from CA, nobody will ever know." In EM's case, I suspect he spends more time business-traveling than at home anyway, so it would be pretty difficult to prove which of his houses he "lives" in.

And if anybody balks, there's a huge amount of PR content proving that they "moved."

This wouldn't bug me so much if it weren't for the arrogant, selfish, hubristic political comments they always make on the way out.

[gok]

The California Franchise Tax Board actually spends a lot resources catching people who spend too much time in state and don't claim to live there. It's actually surprisingly hard for would-be tax dodgers to pull off, and the penalties are severe.

[hguant]

This reminds me of the lengths Ernest Hemmingway went to avoid paying taxes - he kept meticulous diaries, in part because that's who he was, but also to prove to the US and Cuban authorities that he didn't live in their respective jurisdictions long enough to be taxed at <whatever rate>.

Of course, the Castro government seized his assets in Cuba come the revolution, so I don't think it worked out for him in the long run, financially speaking.

[ffggvv]

not sure if they do this but seems pretty easy to see just by looking at electricity usage

[hiq]

> In EM's case, I suspect he spends more time business-traveling than at home anyway, so it would be pretty difficult to prove which of his houses he "lives" in.

I'm not sure about that. I think in these high profile cases tax authorities are more inclined to look into it given how much money there is in the balance. And it's somewhat easier to track people like EM precisely because of their lifestyles: flights would be paid by his companies which would keep receipts for a few years, they would interact with other people from the company in certain location and have a shared calendar, including meeting locations.

[egsmi]

I'll bet EM travels more than the typical CEO, who already travels a lot. Especially if the company is international.

https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-ceos-manage-time

"About half (47%) of a CEO’s work was done at company headquarters. The rest was conducted while visiting other company locations, meeting external constituencies, commuting, traveling, and at home."

Shockingly I didn't see anything about time spent on Hacker News. There's probably a lesson there, or something. :)

[hiq]

I meant that yes he travels a lot, but no that doesn't make it harder to know in which state he has been the most (or whichever rule applies in the US to determine in which state you officially reside) and thus to figure out where he should pay taxes.

[ryanwaggoner]

That the life of a CEO sounds horrible?

[shuckles]

Elon flies using a well known private jet. Guessing his whereabouts is likely easy.

[anchpop]

why is it cringey to not want to see too many homeless people? the existence of homeless people is a failure of the state and it’s perfectly reasonable to want to avoid them on the basis of personal safety.