Travis Kalanick shifts Texas residency ahead of proposed California wealth tax cutoff

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Kalanick Texas residency move

Highlights

Kalanick moved his primary residency from California to Austin, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2025, avoiding a proposed state wealth tax deadline.
The departure of several billionaires, including Kalanick, reportedly removed $540 billion in wealth from California ahead of the proposed tax's Jan. 1 cutoff.
Stanford economists estimated California's wealth tax might raise $30 billion after billionaire relocations, far below supporters' $100 billion projection.

Residency timing and tax exposure

As first reported by Fortune, Kalanick said in March that he moved from California to Austin, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2025, roughly two weeks before the proposed tax would have applied to him. With an estimated net worth of $3.6 billion, the Uber cofounder could have faced a tax bill of about $180 million under the measure.

Kalanick told TBPN that he moved to Texas "prior to January" and that he is now a primary resident of the state. He has said the move is not entirely sudden because he has owned a home on Lake Austin for about five years, citing the lake and his interest in waterskiing as reasons for spending time there.

He is also tying his daily routine to the area. In June, Kalanick posted a video on X showing what he called a "5-minute jet ski commute" across Lake Austin to the office of Atoms, the robotics company he now runs and which was formerly known as CloudKitchens.

Broader pressure on California's tax plan

Kalanick is among several billionaires who left California between the filing of the measure in October 2025 and the Jan. 1 deadline, according to a working paper published this month by Stanford economists Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh. The paper says those departures removed about $540 billion in wealth from the state, based only on publicly confirmed moves.

Under the proposal, the tax applies to billionaires' worldwide net worth, while excluding directly owned real estate and most retirement accounts. If it passes, the bill comes due in 2027.

The California debate adds to a wider policy test over whether taxes on the ultrawealthy accelerate relocation. Supporters of the measure say it would raise about $100 billion, while Jaros and Rauh estimate the figure is closer to $30 billion after accounting for billionaire departures; the source text also points to similar moves by wealthy individuals in Florida, Miami and Monaco after tax changes elsewhere.

Our earlier report on Pakistan’s Tax Year 2026 income tax return filing deadline covered growing calls for the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to grant an extension into December, after the final return form was notified on September 2, 2026. It also noted that persistent glitches on the IRIS portal and unresolved extension applications were raising compliance risks for businesses and individual filers.

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