‘He Can’t Just Pick Up and Go to Florida’: Dan Ives on Musk’s $1 Trillion Texas Problem

Tech analyst Dan Ives, one of Wall Street’s best-known Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) bulls, summed up Elon Musk’s post-midterm position in one line on The Pomp Podcast: “He can’t just pick up and go to Florida.” His reasoning on SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) was that “SpaceX needs to build themselves into a hyperscaler and Texas is a key part of it,” so Musk “is going to have to, I think definitely olive branch a bit” with the state’s incoming leadership.

On Nov 7, Musk posted on X that “SpaceX and Tesla have prospered in Texas, because we were not constantly operating under an oppressive and extractive state government.”

A $1 Trillion Chip Fab Can’t Change Its Address

Terafab is a Texas chip plant that Tesla and SpaceX are building together. It targets 1 million wafers a month, and Musk himself estimates it could cost $1 trillion. SpaceX also wants a gas-fired power plant and supercomputer at Starbase, with a first phase estimated at $24 billion. That project is still waiting on a tax decision from Starbase’s city commission. All of that fab, power, and compute capacity has to be built by somebody, and we highlighted seven suppliers riding the same AI infrastructure wave in a free report here.

Investors have already marked down the risk. SpaceX shares fell 12% over the past month to about $143. SpaceX board member Donald Harrison also resigned one day after the elections.

Tesla slipped less than 1% over the same month, though it is down 16% this year.

Ives Is Right Because Moving Saves Musk Zero in Income Tax

Ives has this one right, and the tax math shows why. Texas voters approved Proposition 4 in 2019 with 77% support. Any future state income tax now needs a two-thirds majority in the legislature. Florida has no personal income tax either. That means moving from Austin to Miami would not lower the state income tax Musk owes on his pay, including the stock compensation linked to Tesla’s 2025 CEO Performance Award. Both rates are zero, so the savings are zero.

What a move cannot do is take the assets with it. Texas taxes business property in the local taxing unit where it has “taxable situs”, meaning where it physically sits. A fab and a power plant sit in Texas no matter where their owner lives. Leaving would cost Musk political good will and save him nothing.

One Question Decides Your Move: Does Your Income Travel With You?

The same logic applies to anyone considering a move to cut taxes. Your savings equal the rate gap between the two states, applied only to income that actually moves with you. A state can still tax a nonresident on income derived from sources within that state. California, for example, taxes residents on all income but nonresidents only on California-source income.

Here is an example with illustrative numbers. A remote worker making $150,000 leaves a state with a 5% flat income tax for one with no income tax. She saves $7,500 a year.

Selling her $400,000 home costs about 6% in fees, or $24,000, and moving costs another $10,000.

She breaks even in about 4.5 years and comes out $41,000 ahead after a decade.

Now try the Texas-to-Florida version. The rate gap is 0%, so the annual savings are $0. She never breaks even, and the full $34,000 in moving costs is a loss. The result is just as bad if her income stays linked to her old state, such as a job she still performs on-site or equity awards making there. The old state keeps its claim on that income, and her savings shrink toward zero.

Run These Numbers Before You Relocate for Taxes

1. Find your real rate gap. Use both states’ current brackets from their revenue departments and apply them to your actual taxable income. If both rates are zero, stop here: you have no income tax savings to capture.
2. Separate portable income from fixed income. Remote salary moves with you. On-site work, a local business, rental property and unvested stock earned in your old state may still be taxed there.
3. Ask payroll how equity will be allocated. Stock that vests after a move is often split between states by days worked in each. Get that split in writing before you set a moving date.
4. Count every switching cost. Include home sale fees, moving expenses, higher insurance and property taxes, then divide the total by your annual savings to get your break-even years.

The next signal for Musk is how Starbase’s city commission rules on the power plant tax decision under Texas’s incoming leadership.

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