Kalanick's Texas Move Dodges a $180 Million California Tax Bill

Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick says he left California for Texas on Dec. 18, 2025 — two weeks before the cutoff that would have exposed his $3.6 billion fortune to a one-time 5% billionaire tax, an estimated $180 million hit. Californians vote on that levy, Proposition 40, next Tuesday.

The tax applies only to people whose primary residence was in California as of Jan. 1, 2026. That single date has already moved a meaningful slice of the state's wealth across its borders.

"Just to be clear, on December 18, I moved to Texas. I don't know what's so specific about December 18, but let's just say it's prior to January," Kalanick told TBPN, nodding to the cutoff. "Yeah, so I'm a primary resident of Texas."

He's not the only billionaire timing an exit. Google cofounder Larry Page spent $173.4 million on two Miami estates after leaving California before the cutoff, avoiding what could have been nearly $1.5 billion if the measure passes. Jeff Bezos left Seattle for Miami before Washington passed its millionaires tax.

Kalanick, for his part, picked Austin over Florida. "I get a little bit [of] FOMO on like, these people going to Florida. I'm like, dude! Why so much Florida action?" he told TBPN. "Come on, homies."

Florida has pulled the biggest names. "All the big guys [are] moving down here," Miami developer Robert Rivani previously told Fortune.

Why Texas wasn't a sudden leap

The move wasn't improvised. Kalanick told TBPN he'd owned a home on Lake Austin, about 20 minutes outside the city, for roughly five years, drawn by the lake and his love of waterskiing. Craft Ventures cofounder David Sacks also relocated to Austin in December 2025 and opened an office there.

Kalanick has leaned into the setting. In June he posted a video on X of what he called his "5-minute jet ski commute" across Lake Austin to the office of Atoms, the robotics company he now runs — the venture formerly known as CloudKitchens.

What does the exodus cost California?

Stanford economists Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh, in a working paper published this month, count the billionaires who left between the measure's October 2025 filing and Jan. 1 — Kalanick among them. Together they took about $540 billion out of the state. That's nearly 30% of the wealth the tax could have reached, and the paper counts only publicly confirmed departures.

The numbers cut against the tax's supporters. Backers say Prop 40 would raise roughly $100 billion. Jaros and Rauh put the figure closer to $30 billion once departures are factored in. Add the income taxes California stops collecting from the billionaires who left, and their simulations show the state losing an average of $38.9 billion.

The tax would reach billionaires' worldwide net worth, excluding directly owned real estate and most retirement accounts, per the measure's text. The bill would come due in 2027, with an option to spread payments over five years for an added charge. Ninety percent of revenue would fund public health care, including Medi-Cal, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Britain offers a cautionary parallel: it scrapped its non-dom status last year, and billionaires have been leaving since, including property mogul David Reuben, who moved to Monaco this summer.

Even a win may not hold

Prop 40's fate is tangled in the same ballot. Proposition 41 would cancel any new state tax enacted after Jan. 1 whose revenue sits outside California's spending limit, as Prop 40's would. Proposition 42 would ban new state taxes on personal property beyond real estate, plus certain retroactive taxes. If either outpolls Prop 40, courts could rule it kills the wealth tax. A September Public Policy Institute of California survey found 52% of likely voters backing Prop 40, 51% for Prop 41 and 54% for Prop 42 — all three could pass.

The politics don't split cleanly either. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, opposes the measure. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) are among its loudest champions.

A win Tuesday would likely trigger litigation. Opponents get 60 days after approval to challenge the measure, and the backward-looking Jan. 1 residency date is an obvious target.

For Kalanick specifically, the stakes are different. Because he says he left before Jan. 1, his exposure hinges on whether California's tax authorities accept Texas as his true home — and the measure gives them broad power to audit billionaires they believe should have paid.