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Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

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Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#681

Post by 2143 »

scoofy wrote: post #422
bgentry wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in CA my whole life, including the last 10 years in the Bay Area, before moving to Austin a year ago. I can’t for the life of me understand what you’re talking about. I-35 is bad, that’s about it. The freeways around the rest of Austin are still moving even around rush hour. None of those hold a candle to the Bay Bridge on a Friday afternoon, not even remotely close to as bad.

The reason is that there is no alternative. You'd be a fool to take the Bay Bridge on a Friday afternoon. BART is there, and any sensible person would take it. In Austin, when traffic is fucked, you're just fucked, especially if you have to cross the river.

> You'd be a fool to take the Bay Bridge on a Friday afternoon.

Yet, so many do, don't they?

:)

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#682

Post by lovecg »

Bud wrote: post #374

I'm sure female employees of Tesla (and wives of male employees, and daughters of employees), will be just thrilled to move to Texas so they can be subjected to Texas' new reproductive rights system, derived from The Handmaid's Tale.

Beliefs about abortion are not split along gender lines. This is mostly a religious vs. non-religious issue, not a male vs. female issue.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#683

Post by mehrdada »

new_realist wrote: post #516
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…

Housing was costly in Palo Alto well before Tesla decided to make it their headquarters. Elon just hates CA for forcing their factory to close during the pandemic, biting the hand that feeds him.

In what way the state is the hand that feeds you? Arguably California bit one of the hands that fed it, as evidence by the ability to move, since it is not that special of a place to do business. The state’s existence is afforded by the residents not the other way around.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#684

Post by thebradbain »

pandaman wrote: post #646
kelnos wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The monthly mortgage payment for a $900k in Austin is probably comparable to a $1.2-1.3M home in CA. Are you talking about paying property taxes via an escrow account that your mortgage lender takes care of for you? That's not your "mortgage payment", which is a function of your loan size, interest rate, and term, and nothing more. The monthly mortgage payment (assuming same term and interest rate) is the same in C…

Not to mention that the property taxes in TX are not charged on the price but on the assessed value. It's same in CA, I imagine, but the assessed value in CA is >= price, while in TX the price is not disclosed to the government and the assessment lags the market price by quite a lot.

Not necessarily true based on the locality. In Dallas, for example, assessed value will (usually, unless you buy in all-cash off-public-market) be set to your market price when you buy it.

From there tax basis more or less tracks market value, but it’s possible to protest the assessor to keep it below market value (though it’s time intensive and requires in-person hearings).

To get ahead of any artificial attempts at deflating tax basis, Dallas also maintains a comprehensive public lot value database that assigns a land value for tax purposes based on census tract (initially likely a product of redlining, but now based on average census tract market value) — so, similar to a pure land value tax, even if you’re sitting on an unimproved piece of land, you’ll still be taxed similar to the average home in the neighborhood, which has the effect of setting a tax floor.

Austin is similar, I believe. Most cities have to, as aside from sales tax property tax is their only source of revenue, because any sort of income tax is constitutionally banned.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#685

Post by jessaustin »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #678
jessaustin wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link in sibling thread: His tax avoidance is even more striking if you examine 2006 to 2018, a period for which ProPublica has complete data. Bezos’ wealth increased by $127 billion, according to Forbes, but he reported a total of $6.5 billion in income. The $1.4 billion he paid in personal federal taxes is a massive number — yet it amounts to a 1.1% true tax rate on the rise in his fortune. Why should we ig…

Because the wealth of Jeff Bezos according to Forbes is just the amount of Amazon shares he owns, multiplied by the price of the stock on whatever day it was that somebody at Forbes decided to work out how much he was worth. Bezos, just like you and I, pays tax on his income. He only gets taxable income from the value of his Amazon shares when he sells them, which like most founders, he doesn’t do very frequently. Yo…

I am not "upset". Since there is no literate reading of this thread that would yield such a conclusion, I suspect you might be projecting... I don't claim this is tax evasion. ProPublica didn't claim this is tax evasion: "Certainly, there are illegal tax evaders among them, but it turns out billionaires don’t have to evade taxes exotically and illicitly — they can avoid them routinely and legally." When rich people write laws, they usually don't write laws they'll need to violate.

Since most people don't own billions of dollars worth of shares in giant firms, this "treatment" is certainly not what "everybody gets". Not even the billionaires' most ardent online white knights get this treatment.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#686

Post by ant6n »

darawk wrote: post #587
ant6n wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the "step up" of the cost basis happen with paying any taxes at the same time?

I'm not sure I understand the question. The assets in your estate get their cost basis reset to the current market value when your estate is passed on. That means the capital gains in his shares disappear. That being said, the estate tax would kick in for everything over 11m, so he'd have to use other tricks to work around that limitation.

There was a typo, with->without

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#687

Post by pandaman »

thebradbain wrote: post #684
pandaman wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that the property taxes in TX are not charged on the price but on the assessed value. It's same in CA, I imagine, but the assessed value in CA is >= price, while in TX the price is not disclosed to the government and the assessment lags the market price by quite a lot.

Not necessarily true based on the locality. In Dallas, for example, assessed value will (usually, unless you buy in all-cash off-public-market) be set to your market price when you buy it. From there tax basis more or less tracks market value, but it’s possible to protest the assessor to keep it below market value (though it’s time intensive and requires in-person hearings). To get ahead of any artificial attempts at…

Non-disclousre is the state law in Texas, so unless you report it yourself, how does the county know what did you pay in Dallas? I've looked on Zillow and some houses in Dallas do seem to show price per sq. foot on sales (no total price though) and some don't. Same with Austin, I figure if the price was the public record it would have been shown as same as it shows on houses in CA - the price of the house on every time it's sold so I doubt what you say is true. Perhaps you meant it might be set to the listing price?

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#688

Post by brianwawok »

jessaustin wrote: post #661
prepend wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldnt the interest on the loan be greater than the taxable event? Even with interest rates low, the prime rate is 3.25 [0]. So isn’t it worse to pay 3% interest per year than a 15-25% capital gain once? I assume Musk thinks he’ll live more than 10 years. [0] https://www.bankrate.com/rates/interest-rates/wall-street-pr...

Interest payments are deductible. [0] The scheme was described by ProPublica earlier this year. [1] If they sell stock they lose the control over the firm that stock represents. That would be fine for normal humans, but not for the super control freaks under discussion. The interest, which is certainly lower than "prime" for borrowers like this in the era of zero-benchmark [2], is typically paid by future loans. It d…

Not sure why the downvotes, this is 100% what is going on the the top of the top 1%.

Which is why the current congress push to ramp up capital gains to get money back from the rich is super super misguided. It screws startup founders like myself, but it literally has no impact on the mega rich.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#689

Post by muzz »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #585
muzz wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon personally potentially saving billions in taxes might have a lot to do with both of those ie his move and then the company's move. As an investor in the company, I am concerned about that (that this change was done to benefit one person rather than the company). https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Elon-Musk-...

I'm a shareholder as well. I can see the value add of a friendlier tax regime for the company, its employees, and indeed its CEO, less bureaucracy, and access to clean energy that Texas has to offer over the Bay are. I see it in terms of share holder value. Overpaying for staff, infrastructure, housing, facilities, etc. and dealing with local government that is too inept to address even the most basic challenges (hou…

> They have big expansion plans and most of that is outside of California

You might want to tell Tesla that. They just added a ton of office space in Palo Alto: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/08/tesla-agrees-to-big-o...

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#690

Post by jillesvangurp »

muzz wrote: post #631
jillesvangurp wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a shareholder as well. I can see the value add of a friendlier tax regime for the company, its employees, and indeed its CEO, less bureaucracy, and access to clean energy that Texas has to offer over the Bay are. I see it in terms of share holder value. Overpaying for staff, infrastructure, housing, facilities, etc. and dealing with local government that is too inept to address even the most basic challenges (hou…

This is why we have markets. This news is now public, and TSLA is down today, ie investors have decided it is worth less after the news than before it.

Slightly up now. Tesla has been trending up throughout last quarter by about 150$, 50$ in the last month, and 10$ in the last week. It's now worth more than before the announcements. Not surprising considering another great quarter and the opening party for their Berlin factory last weekend. Of course most big investors would have factored in most of that news already long before any announcements would have been made.
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