Tesla CEO Elon Musk moved himself and his car company, Tesla, to Texas.
Patrick Pleul/Pool via Reuters
- Elon Musk bashed California for “overregulation” and “overtaxation” in a recent interview.
- He said he misses aspects of the state, mainly his friends.
- Musk now lives in Texas, where Tesla is based and where SpaceX builds and launches rockets.
Elon Musk railed against his former home of California during an interview published Wednesday. But he said he misses parts of living in the state, including his friends.
“Some of my best friends are in California. I do miss many aspects of California, especially my friends,” Musk said during an interview with The Babylon Bee, a satirical news website with a Christian and conservative slant.
“But it’s increasingly difficult to get things done. California used to be the land of opportunity. Now it has become and is becoming more so the land of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation, and scorn,” he said.
In recent years, Musk has sold off a vast portfolio of California real estate. Most recently, he parted ways with a sprawling Bay Area estate for $30 million, which he said was his last remaining house. Late last year, the Tesla billionaire confirmed that he had moved to Texas, where he claims to rent a $50,000 home from his rocket company, SpaceX.
In October, Musk announced that Tesla would relocate its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, which he has called “the biggest boomtown that America has seen in 50 years.” The move came after public spats between Musk and local California officials over COVID-19 shelter-in-place measures. In May 2020, Musk threatened to move all of Tesla’s operations to Texas or Nevada as tensions boiled over.
Another likely advantage of moving to Texas for Musk: no state income tax. The richest man on the planet has sold more than $14 billion worth of Tesla stock this year and is expecting a hefty tax bill of around $11 billion. He says that’s the most any American has paid in history.
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