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Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

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Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#191

Post by asdff »

larsiusprime wrote: post #45
kiklion wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I misunderstanding or are you basically saying that the monthly cost of housing is roughly equivalent so more taxes = lower home prices, such that taxes + principal + interest is the same in both places?

To clarify a bit: The monthly cost of renting a house is way higher in California, not because it costs more to rent the house, but because it costs more to rent the land the house sits on. Property tax taxes two things -- the house, and the land. The portion of the tax that taxes the land is capitalized into the selling/renting price of the land, which is to say that causes it to cost less to buy the land and less t…

>To clarify a bit: The monthly cost of renting a house is way higher in California, not because it costs more to rent the house, but because it costs more to rent the land the house sits on

Rent is not really tied to land in CA. If it were, a 1br in an apartment complex would be cheaper than a 1br detached unit since you are renting less physical land, and while much rarer, both 1brs tend to be about the same prices. Biggest factors influencing local variance in rents in California seem to be quality of neighborhood which is proxy for access to high paying jobs, fit and finish of the unit, and size of the unit.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#192

Post by darawk »

random314 wrote: post #176
darawk wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you could just as easily argue that the problems of California are what caused his move to Texas, as simply testing the waters for the move of the HQ.

Musk had billions of dollars in performance based stocks vesting over these years. The simplest reason for moving is avoiding billions of dollars in California state income taxes.

No it isn't. CA will still try to tax those shares if and when he decides to liquidate them. However, Musk does not ever need to liquidate any shares. If he never wants to pay any tax, all he has to do is buy a hedge against the shares (thereby locking in a particular price) and take out loans against the now hedged asset. And like magic, he's got all the cash he could ever need and zero capital gains.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#193

Post by posguy »

pvarangot wrote: post #158
etchalon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.

I talked to several Tesla and former Tesla folks that will probably relocate because of this, and the say is that since Austin in less NIMBY than the Bay Area new housing will get built and prices will go down. It's a more complex bet than just "we move there because houses are affordable now".

Apple took this bet years ago, it has not panned out. Austin's housing and rental prices just keep increasing year after year.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#194

Post by hindsightbias »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #31
temp8964 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Tesla a progressive company? And what does that mean?

I thought I indicated that in literally next sentence; Musk is building companies to change future and disrupt status quo in general (so opposite from the most generic definition of conservativism which seeks to preserve it) ; and specifically Tesla is a company that builds a product that in small way obviates what Texas exports and lives on

I predict sales of Boring Flamethrowers will skyrocket in TX. The Truck might make a good Techinical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#195

Post by xvector »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #126
danhak wrote: post #34

California's tax regime is really backward. I suspect Tesla's departure is just the tip of the iceberg and that the repeal of the SALT deduction in 2017 really hastened this trend. High earners pay an effective tax rate of > 50%. They are partially picking up the slack from Prop 13, which artificially distorts the housing market by allowing longtime homeowners to pay property taxes based on decades-old assessed value…

The exodus has been soundly proven to be a myth. [1] But assuming it isn't, there aren't many better places to go. Texas is a joke. Traffic is worse than LA in the major cities and it is run by Christian zealots. Yeah maybe you pay fewer taxes but the other quality-of-life tradeoffs aren't worth it. [1] https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/California-exodus-is-ju...

It's such a terrible state. Infested with ultrawide roads and zero walkability. Women don't have bodily autonomy - imagine trying to raise a daughter in such an environment. I'd hope that alone would deter engineers with families from the state.

Not to mention the a worthless human being of a governor. Backwards politics and ideals. It's a joke of a state, everything wrong with America hyper-concentrated on steroids.

The pros of moving to Texas is that housing is cheaper. The downside is that you have to live in fucking Texas.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#196

Post by setpatchaddress »

marcusverus wrote: post #51
NikolaNovak wrote: post #9

I know this is charged but it's genuine question due to my ignorance - why are companies having or moving HQs to Texas? It feels that : 1. It's way out of temperate climate that one would live in when given full choice and all things equal (understanding they never are of course - I live in great white North :) 2. Politics are highly conservative and frequently invasive. now clearly half of Americans like it that way…

1) Very true, but unless you're an avid hiker or a marathoner, I'm not sure how big of a role climate plays in deciding a home. 2) Texas politics are invasive if you're a woman in need of an abortion, sure. But then, California politics are invasive for everyone who earns an income. If Texas politics are 'frequently invasive', then California politics must be downright suffocating.

I assume by "California politics" you mean taxes? Got news for you about TX property tax, chief.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#197

Post by Apocryphon »

pvarangot wrote: post #158
etchalon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.

I talked to several Tesla and former Tesla folks that will probably relocate because of this, and the say is that since Austin in less NIMBY than the Bay Area new housing will get built and prices will go down. It's a more complex bet than just "we move there because houses are affordable now".

Beyond housing, isn't traffic a problem? Lots of people will be commuting from Round Rock.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#198

Post by m0zg »

BurningFrog wrote: post #171
m0zg wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've looked at properties in Austin area a few months back. It's more affordable than CA, but it's still way out of reach of most non-HQ staff that Tesla employs. I've read the stat that property values have gone up 43% due to exodus from locked down blue states over the course of just the past year. Couple this with Texas' higher than average property tax rate (_especially_ in Austin area) and you've got some pretty…

One theory is that it's still legal to build new housing in Texas, so the Austin supply can increase to match the demand.

The traffic situation is already pretty bad in that area, seemingly deliberately so. That is the case even during the pandemic, I can only imagine how bad it is when _nobody_ is remote. It seems that progressive Austin wants everyone to move to the city and give up their cars, which is not a realistic thing to do for most people in TX because it's not built for such lifestyle. I have no other plausible explanation.

Since I'm apparently "posting too fast", I'll just post my reply to the post below here.

US cities (including Austin) are not built to make this viable. I grew up in Russia which mirrors the European way of building things. Everything you need for your family is within walking distance, for what I hope are obvious reasons. The US is not built for this. If one's goal is to get rid of cars, you have to build cities with that in mind. This takes decades, which is why nobody seems interested in actually doing this. Instead we get this passive-aggressive "let's build less parking and roads" thing that you see in US urban centers. No attention whatsoever is paid to how the folks actually live, how they raise their kids, and so on. I'd also argue that, as we switch to electric (and eventually to nuclear power, since that seems inevitable if we actually want to solve the climate crisis rather than just make Al Gore filthy rich), cars will become less and less of a problem, and population will spread out rather than move into the cities. Cities are a bad deal as it is. Expensive real estate, congested roads, high crime.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#199

Post by paxys »

prepend wrote: post #81
guardiangod wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>High earners pay an effective tax rate of > 50%. Musk has not paid any tax because he hasn't cashed out any of his stock options yet. Some of his options will expire next year so he will pay tax then, but I am sure California will get the lion share of the tax revenue (as Musk lived in California up to 2021.)

Tesla employees lots of people who pay income tax. Capital gains is taxed on the residence at time of sale, not time of purchase. So if Musk sells when he’s not a resident of CA, he won’t pay CA taxes.

Nope. CA taxes you on the shares you earned in the state, regardless of where you sold it.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#200

Post by op00to »

m0zg wrote: post #139
Apocryphon wrote: post #56

The official reason is because of housing: "To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California," Musk said. "Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it's jammed." But, he added, "It's tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away....There's a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area." https://ww…

I've looked at properties in Austin area a few months back. It's more affordable than CA, but it's still way out of reach of most non-HQ staff that Tesla employs. I've read the stat that property values have gone up 43% due to exodus from locked down blue states over the course of just the past year. Couple this with Texas' higher than average property tax rate (_especially_ in Austin area) and you've got some pretty…

> property values have gone up 43% due to exodus from locked down blue states

Citation needed for this property value claim, also for the existence of “locked down” blue states. I haven’t seen a lockdown yet like many other places.

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