An increasing number of venture capitalists, startup entrepreneurs and wealthy tech moguls are leaving southern California for Las Vegas, a city that they view as a much friendlier place for business.
Las Vegas has always been a tourist destination and a great place to own a business, but all of Nevada has become very alluring to people who are tired of paying the 8.84% corporate tax rate in California.
Nevada, by contrast, doesn’t levy taxes on any corporate income or shares. There also aren’t any taxes on franchises, gifts, estates, inheritances or personal income. All of this means that wealthy business owners and tech moguls who live there and locate their company there are rewarded handsomely for doing so.
In recent years, billionaires such as Peggy and Andrew Cherng, the co-founders of Panda Express, have left California to go to Las Vegas. So, too, has David Chao, who’s the general partner and co-founder of DCM, a venture firm that handles multiple billions of dollars.
Many celebrities such as Dean Cain and Mark Wahlberg have also relocated to Las Vegas recently to evade the mansion tax that California has on large homes.
A large portion of the celebrities and elites of Hollywood lean overwhelmingly toward Democrats, but that’s not the case for the business moguls who are moving to southern Nevada. They want to maintain the pro-business policies that the state already has in place.
Teddy Liaw, the founder of NexRep, talked with The Las Vegas Review-Journal recently and said he isn’t worried that Las Vegas will soon become like California, which has a growing issue with homelessness and high crime rates in many pockets.
Liaw, who moved from San Francisco to Nevada a few years ago, said:
“There’s a reason they’re leaving California in the first place: the politics and the regulatory environment. They are seeing the allure here in terms of access and quality of life and the opportunities we have here.
“At the end of the day, California has lost population. This is a big deal because it’s the first time in history that California has lost congressional seats because of population decline.”
Since 2018, California has lost hundreds of thousands of residents who have fled the state every year. The state posted only a moderate gain of new residents last year.
Between 2020 and 2023, about 158,000 people relocated from California to Nevada, according to data from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.
Liaw is one of them, and he founded a group called the Vegas Tech Summit, which hosts tech entrepreneurs so they can discuss the region’s business landscape.
The third summit was held last week at the Summit Club in Summerlin. One attendee was Kent Yoshimura, who co-founded a business worth multiple millions of dollars.
Yoshimura, who moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles, spoke highly of his current home, saying:
“The employment laws are a lot easier here, the affordability of a house, transportation. I live in Summerlin, and it’s 20 miles to my office and it takes 20 minutes. … When I was in downtown [Los Angeles] to Koreatown where my office was, it was only eight miles away and it took me 45 minutes.”