Posted on 05/03/2014 4:30:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Another blow was struck for competition, common sense and low taxes as Toyota Motor Corp. announced that it will be moving its campus in Torrance, California to a suburb outside of Dallas, Texas.
“Toyota Motor Corp. is moving substantial parts of its U.S. headquarters in Torrance, Calif., to suburban Dallas,” writes the Detroit News, “as the world’s largest automaker seeks savings from its U.S. sales unit, people familiar with the matter said.”
Although no figures are yet available, anecdotal evidence suggests that people are fleeing California, not just companies.
SFGate.com says that 66% of all state revenue now comes from personal income taxes, and that the top 1% paid 41% of all personal income taxes in 2011, while half of all adult Californians paid no income tax at all.
And that was before Proposition 30 passed, a measure that raised the top income tax rate in California to 13.3%, the highest in the nation.
That plays into part of the corporate moves. Imagine being able to give employees a pay increase between 8% and 13.3% by moving from California, to say, Texas.
Not coincidentally, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has spent a great deal of time advertising to Golden Staters the benefits of moving to Texas. Similarly, Indiana and Wisconsin have taken pains to try to recruit corporate relocation from high tax jurisdictions like neighboring Illinois.
Imagine how much happier Toyota salespeople will be, who after all, get paid more money if they sell more cars and now will be able to keep more.
Show me a unionized employee who got a pay increase of 8%-13.3% this past year.
To add to the injury of a tax increase, California also made the tax increase retroactive, which raises a whole bunch of constitutional concerns.
AdverseEvents founder Brian Overstreet told CBN News that he “has suddenly found himself owing an extra $250,000 because of this sudden move by the state to impose back taxes for the past five years.”
Ironically, California is sitting on one of the largest oil finds, with an estimated 400 billion barrels of oil, or about half of Saudi Arabia's conventional reserves. But instead of tapping that economic potential, the state is taking the lazy man's route out by making the millionaires pay.
So oil companies are leaving California in droves, as our colleague Erika Johnsen at HotAir pointed out in March.
Destination? You guessed it: Texas.
Four of the top six states in GDP growth between 2008 and 2012 are high-energy states. North Dakota, Texas, Alaska and Louisiana posted GDP growth between 8% and 35% in the five years through 2012.
Even Hollywood is fleeing the Golden State.
Despite attempts by California to use the millionaire tax to produce subsidies in order to keep film production on the West Coast, states and countries that are hungrier for the jobs films produce, temporary though they may be, are outbidding them, notes Variety, the bible for all things Hollywood.
California currently pays a 20% subsidy for production costs. Australia pays 30% subsidy for production costs.
While the correct subsidy number should be 0% to offset production costs, California's political reaction to this Hollywood holocaust is predictably foolish.
“Steve Dayan, who serves as vice chairman of the state film commission and secretary-treasurer of Local 399 of the Intl. Brotherhood of Teamsters,” writes Variety, “spoke at the Feb. 22 labor rally, promising his union would be willing to repeat its 1999 action of encircling the State Capitol in Sacramento with 200 Teamster trucks — a tactic used to campaign for incentives. ‘We are not going to let other states poach our jobs,’ he said, evoking loud applause from the 700-plus attendees.”
Yeah, keep fighting the last war.
Presumably, Dayan believes that they can just raise taxes on millionaires even higher or, better yet, Toyota Motor Corp. to subsidize the jobs that California can't compete for on the open market.
In other words, expect the exodus from California to continue.
Or they can make residency “retroactive” like the b******* are trying to do with income taxes
Just unreal
It’s why the Berlin Wall was built.
And as long as CA keeps practicing its politics of sticking-it-to-the-rich insanity, instead of politics of economic growth, those of us who have left the state are in no hurry to return.
I love CA. No matter where I live, CA will always be my home. But I am saddened whenever I go back and see that the state looks run-down (presumably because so much is spent on redistributing wealth that little is left for infrastructure, and because taxes are so high people can’t afford to maintain their properties). We went to my favorite state park last summer, and found out that its operating budget had been cut... while the state continues to look for more ways to transfer wealth to the permanent poverty class and illegals.
In a sane state, infrastructure and parks wouldn’t be underfunded in order to maximize welfare giveaways.
As referenced in my statement, my experience comes from Northeastern liberals coming to my State and with that migration comes political change. I am slowly watching Florida become little California so please,understand that I am well aware conservatives reside within your State, as they do in mine.
It's a shame as I love this state. It was such a beautiful state before the dems took over.
Not necessarily.
Not necessarily.
But will they vote Republican? Probably not look at Northern VA they make $$ but vote Democrat
And we can guess who the tax users are, can’t we?
Yes, New York State IS kidding. While they claim to have “tax deferred” enterprise zones, these are scattered and only in very impacted pockets within the state. Once the enterprise gets up and running, their best strategy is to exit the state when the ten-year exemption is ended.
At which point the state legislature will confiscate whatever holdings the former transplant still has in the “Empire State”.
Get in, milk the temporary advantages, and get out.
New York State would do far better to make the business climate better for the enterprises that are already operating on something of a paying basis, or are still there, but near moribund.
Closed plants pay no wages. A fact that seems to escape the folks in Albany.
Oh for heavens sake, FNC has been playing this ad for month now on our Charter Cable channel
As a Texan, what worries me is the democrats trying very hard to turn Houston into a liberal community just like Austin. They are trying very hard to make Texas a blue state and with that goes the Texas economy...as well as everything else. Corporations coming to Texas are fine, as long as they leave their liberal politics in the states where they are.
What if you didn’t “make” anything?
A lot of the super rich who support and vote democrat are trust fund babies or have established trust funds.
Technically, and for tax purposes of course, they don’t “make” anything or have very little “income” for all of their wealth. Their wealth is another matter, but that gets locked up in a trust fund that exists to shield them from taxes and provides the great benefit of serving their every need for extravagant living, such as a luxurious mansion, expensive cars, expert staff, from chefs to stable boys. If things get too close tax wise and such, they can always have their multi-million dollar yachts registered in Mexico or Rhode Island; where ever it is cheaper and works on paper.
Then they can go out and advocate democrat causes, look and feel like they CARE, and campaign for even more taxes on the income of the “rich”, who are generally small business people providing most of the country’s jobs.
What a scam!
The communist regime from East Germany didn’t want the East Germans and East Berliners to go over to the West. That is why the wall was built. I had a cousin who was from Leipzig and as far as I know he went or tried to go over the wall. No one knows what happened to him
Don’t Kaleefornicate Texas.
Next; pay next year’s taxes...
Sorta like the old Cockroach Motel ad...
"They can check in, but they can't check out."
Fortunately, an exit tax is a dead issue having been ruled on by Scotus in the same category as other barriers to interstate trade and travel.
I’m sure the best of the worst legal liberal trash minds are still trying to circumvent this as we write...
Give it a few more decades...
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