Want to leave CA or another high tax state? It might cost you

Introducing the EXIT Tax

It’s pretty hard to get people to want to leave this.

I always feel like I have to say when I do a story like this on California that I still love California. I don’t get why anyone would stay in other high tax states like Illinois or New York which are often cold and lack the Sierras or the Pacific Ocean, but I understand why people try to stay in California. Afternoons in Calistoga can be glorious. The people are mostly nice. Big Sur is sublime.

But, but, the place is crazytown too. It’s now a one party state and that party has drifted farther and farther left with each passing year. As such things have gotten tougher and tougher for businesses. Housing has been regulated to death forcing prices up. It is not unusual in California for multi-million dollar homes to share the same road with homeless encampments full of people using hard drugs. It’s long been a weird state and now it is in many ways just flat out dysfunctional too. And it doesn’t feel like this is going to correct itself anytime soon.

So it makes sense that some people, in spite of the ocean, the mountains, and the weather, feel they need to move. This is especially true if one has a significant amount of money. The writing is on the wall in Cali.

But California (government) has gotten hip to the outflow and wants to extract its many pounds of flesh from you or your business if you choose to head east. If your business (or you) have assets of $30 million or more Sacramento will take .4% of these assets before you can go to Texas or Tennessee or Florida or wherever.