Yes.. Florida is fine, and the weather is even nice 3-6 months/year depending on your basis of comparison.
But if you are unfathomably rich, it's missing a lot of the culture/arts/schools/dining/tier 1 medical care/things to do of a big blue city like NYC/Bay Area/whatever. It's also culturally a place who already made their money elsewhere go to flaunt it. It's a very different vibe than places people work and grow wealth.
So a lot of the uber rich already have 5 homes, one of which is Florida, and they spend exactly enough days there, creating exactly enough of a paper trail to show Florida is their primary residence.
In practice it may just be adjustments around the edges to where they already spend time. Most only do this if they are childless, the kids are out of the house, or they are extremely divorced.. since it's disruptive to kids being in school.
- they move their official residence and happen to stay most of the time at the "totally just rented" place in the same state anyway
- or keep telling everyone how they're going to move, but don't actually do.
Because let's be honest - if there wasn't a big reason to live where they do, and it wasn't a pain to work from another state, they wouldn't be there to begin with. They're paying the higher taxes because they benefit(ed) in some way.
They also benefit from being famous and threatening to leave.
A number of my friends who belong in these very high upper brackets have suggested to me, more in sorrow than in anger, that if I am reelected they will have to move to some other Nation because of high taxes here. I shall miss them very much but if they go they will soon come back. For a year or two of paying taxes in almost any other country in the world will make them yearn once more for the good old taxes of the U.S.A.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Address at Worcester, Massachusetts
October 21, 1936
It's always a bluff like a kid throwing a temper tantrum going to "hold their breath".
They threaten to do this every single time there is an election in NYC. And studies have shown that they are lying. To try and manipulate people. The rich are actually far less likely to move.
Every election you have celebrities and wealthy individuals threaten to leave the country, etc. Nearly none of them follow-through, and of the ones that do, many ultimately move back.
Page left California specifically because of the so-called "Billionaire Tax", and is taking with him his family (which will inherit his vast riches), his philanthropy, his non-profits, many jobs, taxes and more. The effect will be generations of lost benefits to California.
Yeah; there's absolutely no way he could possibly support philanthropic efforts in one state from another. Nope; everyone now loses out because of it!
There is absolutely 0 reason that someone worth $270 billion needs to worry about the 5% tax. The 5% tax will reduce his estimated worth by $13.5B bringing him to a paltry $256.5B.
To put $256.5B in perspective: over two /lifetimes/, he would need to spend around $4.5MM a day to exhaust that number, assuming it did not grow exponentially over that same time.
1. The tax could cause him to sell equity he doesn't want to. It's not like he has $270B in a checking account.
2. If they do it once then why not again next year? Maybe next time it's for only $100 million or $10 million or $1 million. Eventually everyone is paying 5% of their wealth every year. Why not? That's how we got the current income tax.
3. It's the principle. Resisting these efforts sends a signal that they aren't a good idea.
4. Do we really think the money is better off in control of the incompetent CA government than invested in private enterprise or donated to charity? I don't see how it's better for it to line Newsom's Swiss bank account.
> 1. The tax could cause him to sell equity he doesn't want to. It's not like he has $270B in a checking account.
If there is $270B in equity invested, making those 5% back should be rather straightforward for someone with that much wealth, a decent wealth manager would recoup that easily. Money makes money.
> 2. If they do it once then why not again next year? Maybe next time it's for only $100 million or $10 million or $1 million. Eventually everyone is paying 5% of their wealth every year. Why not? That's how we got the current income tax.
This is just a slippery slope fallacy.
> 3. It's the principle. Resisting these efforts sends a signal that they aren't a good idea.
Exactly, it's blackmailing, sending a message "look what you've made me do" when the government attempts to reign in the ultrawealthy.
> 4. Do we really think the money is better off in control of the incompetent CA government than invested in private enterprise or donated to charity? I don't see how it's better for it to line Newsom's Swiss bank account.
With this argument you can defend never paying taxes to CA then, do you think it would be better as a complete anarco-capitalist state? It makes me sad that USA's public governance is so bad that this argument is always used to defend rich people not paying taxes; the political system is so absolutely broken that people prefer to allow ultrawealthy folks to keep hoarding even in the face of very real issues fracturing society stemming from that instead of thinking about how that money could fix many public issues.
> If there is $270B in equity invested, making those 5% back should be rather straightforward for someone with that much wealth, a decent wealth manager would recoup that easily. Money makes money.
Its his voter shares, he wont get them back. Larry and Sergei currently control 51% of Google votes, if they sell any more they lose control of Google so they can't afford to sell.
> Exactly, it's blackmailing, sending a message "look what you've made me do" when the government attempts to reign in the ultrawealthy.
If it’s blackmailing, it’s blackmailing that is legal and extremely common. Similar events have occurred in multiple jurisdictions around the world whenever wealth taxes are attempted. The only way to prevent this in a country like the US that doesn’t allow retroactive taxation is to institute an exit tax, but this is also not legal at the state level in the US. Oh, and you also likely need capital controls, another no-no inside the US.
Capital flight is so historically common that there’s a common phrase to describe it. I have no idea why CA thought they were any different.
But if you are unfathomably rich, it's missing a lot of the culture/arts/schools/dining/tier 1 medical care/things to do of a big blue city like NYC/Bay Area/whatever. It's also culturally a place who already made their money elsewhere go to flaunt it. It's a very different vibe than places people work and grow wealth.
So a lot of the uber rich already have 5 homes, one of which is Florida, and they spend exactly enough days there, creating exactly enough of a paper trail to show Florida is their primary residence.
In practice it may just be adjustments around the edges to where they already spend time. Most only do this if they are childless, the kids are out of the house, or they are extremely divorced.. since it's disruptive to kids being in school.