Folks I am finally leaving California with my team and my girlfriend I've had enough Florida is way better. Should I look at you or the camera because I was looking at the camera for a second then I look at you a couple weeks ago I sent what will be one of my last estimated payments to the state 221,000 bucks. This will be the last of millions I've sent to Sacramento over the past few years. I'm also about to list what was once my Dreamhouse in the Hollywood Hills onto the rental market and refile my entire business and send all of my stuff to my new Florida address, trans my car, over and everything and in today's video I Want to walk you through the reasoning for why I've decided to make these drastic moves and why I'm doing it before the end of the year.

There's four major reasons: there's the taxes, the horrible policies, the culture, and of course the bad time zone. Of course we participate in the stock market in California It's not a good time zone for the stock market. Let's just say that unless you don't like your sleep, and hopefully this video will give you some insights. If you are thinking of relocating yourself or your dog into somebody that's thinking about relocating, there are some interesting points that I'm going to raise in this video.

Okay, so we'll start with the taxes. Taxas So it's no surprise to you that California taxes are insane. but here are some of my personal payments and business payments to the: Golden State So January 15th 2021 I Personally paid $466,000 to the California Franchise Tax Board for 2020. This is in addition to an earlier payment I personally made that year in September of $75,000 These were estimated payments for tax year 2020.

You pay the following: January in March of 2021 though Zip Trader the business entity paid another 62,000 to California April 15th 2021 I personally paid 161,000 to California June 15th 2021 I personally paid $210,000 to California and another payment in December on December 27th 2021 Zip Trader paid $500,000 to the state of California Now, why are some of these round numbers? Well, the way it works is you pay estimated taxes so you estimate what you're going to owe and then at the end of the year when you actually have the actual number and the tax returns, well, you either have a refund or you have to pay more. But anywh, who I've paid hundreds of thousands more to the California Franchise Tax Board in 201, 22 and in 2023 and in fact, just a couple weeks ago, as I mentioned earlier, I sent in another 221,000 from the business on top of whatever else I'll end up owing in when 2023 ends. So obviously a lot going out to California just to live in the state of California the Golden State where you pay gold prices but you don't get any gold. Are you stupid or something? Maybe I should find a new boyfriend On top of that, my Hollywood Hills home property tax is around 50k a year.

Sales taxes on the higher side relative to the rest of the nation. I've purchased cars in California and paid tens of thousand of dollars in taxes. The gas taxes are some of the highest in the nation and gas prices are almost 2x what they are in the rest of the country. Los Angeles also has a small but still very very annoying County tax which is a percentage of your income.

There's there's a random assortment of these little fees that are based on gross receipts that apply to LLC that apply to personal and so on and so forth, which can add up quite a lot. It also, of course, costs a lot to have an account that's able to go and follow all of California's everchanging tax code and different regulations and rules and blah blah blah blah. La. Now of course the other question is, how much is this relative to My overall income? What percentage of my income is this? Well, if you pull up the country state tax rates, you can see that California stands out at 13.3% 13.3% Try to find another state that is 13.3% or higher.

Keep looking, there is none. Yes, New York City Residents have a combined city and state tax which is comparable, but basically nowhere else. I mean Hawaii is at about 11% but nothing else even comes close to the 13.3% that California has. And as someone who again actually lives and runs a business here, there's also a bunch of random LLC fees and random percentage of income fees that you have to pay if you live here and you make over a certain amount and that can add up to well over 13.3% And remember, this is just state tax.

Of course, when you add up both state and federal taxes, you're looking at something around 54% of your income going to the government in just one type of tax. the income tax I did the math for 2021 and when you add up all of the income taxes I paid and state sales tax and property tax and so on and so forth. Well, it turns out that I paid about 60% of my income in taxes, which if you do the math, working about 365 days in a year while 219 of those days I worked for free for the government. that means that my best earning year and the craziest work hour year of my life 2021, Well, I essentially worked for the government for free from January 1st all the way to August 7th I worked more than half the year just for the government alone, which to me is a pretty bad deal to say the least.

Now again, I'm extreme blessed I'm extremely thankful and I'm very lucky to have had the opportunities that this country has presented me with. And I'm happy to pay some taxes in order to benefit from that. But when it comes to California of course, at a certain point you have to ask, is this worth it And I've come to the point in my life where I'm like, you know what it's it's not really worth it. It's really, really hard for me today to make sense of paying this extra massive state tax, especially because better States exist that have no tax.

California has six of the top 10 cities with the largest homeless population Californ. Public Schools consistently score lower than states with much lower tax revenue and much lower education spending. California has some of the highest poverty levels per capita California has dilapidated infrastructure and lawlessness is rising pretty damn fast and a lot of times they don't even prosecute the lawlessness and they say it's society's fault so the criminal should never be blamed. California Cities like San Francisco spend up to $1.7 million just to create toilets for the public.

What a good use of capital, folks. Glad I'm paying over half my income so they can waste it on toilets. I mean I knew that I was flushing the money down the toilet, but I didn't know that toilet cost 1.7 million bucks. On top of the bad policies that I've already touched on like the homelessness and the poverty rates and the schools and so on and so forth.

while Los Angeles where I live is one of the most polluted cities in the United States Yes, they have many insane costly green regulations which mostly destroy small businesses, but at the same time, these regulations don't really help reduce the pollution because at the end of the day, the cities are so damn overcrowded and there's so many cars and they're so tightly packed together and the road system is so so poorly designed that all of the smoke just comes from the cars and congregates in the clouds and the mountains. The main freeway in Los Angeles is the 405 and it's known as the 405 parking lot because it barely moves for many hours, many peak hours of the day. If you look at the top 10 most polluted cities in America by ozone and particle pollution, specifically, six out of the 10 are in California. California is also a state that favors the rich and powerful and the rich and Powerful corporations above the little guy and the small business.

The politicians here act like they are. For the little guy, they act like they're for the small business, but they put regulation and Regulation and burden and burden and fee and fee on the small business that quite frankly can't afford it while the big businesses with those same regulations can very very well afford it. Which means what? well it means, big corporations are able to consolidate the entire Market. We're increasingly in a situation where only the wealthiest companies like your Apple, your Meta, your alphabet are able to survive and smaller companies mom and pop stores can't That's why the number of small firms in California per 1,000 people is well below average for the entire country.

Because this is not a small business friendly. State This is a big business, friendly, rich, and Powerful you already made it kind of. State Who gets screwed by these high taxes and regulations and endless rules that nobody in their right mind could possibly possibly track without expensive teams of lawyers and accountants? Well, the little guy and and I just don't want to support that anymore. California is also a state that is very, very, very quick to cramp down on any business assuming that all businesses are guilty until proven innocent, assuming that businesses are out to get you instead of businesses are trying to serve the customer.

Regulators In 2020, shut down small businesses with a policy of shut them down first, ask questions later, ask later if it was justified. Who cares? if they go out of business, who cares who benefited the most from shutdowns Will big companies that were able to consolidate their market share companies like for example Chipotle which I love Chipotle Don't get me wrong, but any burrito shop that was shut down for 6 months that was competing with Chipotle Well, Chipotle had a big Edge because they had so much money on the national stage. the mom and pop stores not so much so for these Reasons I'm very, very sad to say that California from a regulation standpoint from a tax standpoint from a business standpoint is a nightmare now now. I Totally agree that California has been one of the most successful capitalist stories in history, But unfortunately, year after year after year, decade after decade after decade, they've been trying to cash out of that and the trends are reversing very, very quickly.

They had success and now they're trying to rip it all away next culture. So there's a really, really bad attitude growing here in California. It's not everyone, but it's a lot of people in the 20, 30, maybe even 40 age demographic. and I think it's eventually going to be the predominant culture.

When I was at University at UCSC, you'd have people sitting around with the devil's lettuce all day, just kind of sitting there complaining about how bad capitalism is and how hard their lives are and how this country sucks and how the way to fight it is just not to participate in it. And these people act like they're morally Superior and they feel genuinely like they're morally Superior And quite frankly, it gets really, really annoying. Now again, this isn't everybody. I Mean this: California The state of California has 40 million people, but still, it's a predominant culture that is emerging very, very rapidly.

If you've gone to any University in California, you know that's the case. And those people Graduate University And they go on to the workforce and they change the culture at Massive Major Corporation after major corporation and it predominantly circles across the society. And that's an attitude that I just don't want to be a part of anymore. A lot of people use cultural issues as a way to excuse themselves from putting any effort into their lives, getting a job, starting a family, so on and so forth.

and I just I don't like that attitude. Now that's not to say that there are no problems in society or that things are fair in this country, but at the same time, sitting around and bitching about it all day quite frankly doesn't help. It's also true that when you meet new people, you kind of have to walk on eggshells because there's a lot of things and a lot of topics that people are very, very sensitive about. In fact, if you say something like oh, I watch I don't know Joe Rogan which is the number one podcast in America People could get offended.

People are like whoa, he's a propagandist. Somebody told me that that at a party and then all of a sudden the next time I went to that party, everybody's like oh, oh, Charlie he he watches Joe Rogan he listens to Joe Rogan That guy is a propagandist. He believes in propaganda. It's like really, he's the number one podcast in America So in California you just have this really really unhealthy emerging culture and I just do not like it.

And finally, number four time Zone. Now of course this one's not California's fault. It's not California's fault that located on the west coast but California is 3 hours behind New York which means I have to get up at about 5:00 a.m. to prepare.

but on Florida on the East Coast I only have to wake up at like 8:00 and often times I like to go to sleep at about 12:00 or 1 anyways. and if I'm getting up at 5:00 in the morning, well, my sleep schedule's a little screwed up so that in and of itself is a huge benefit for me personally. maybe not for other people, but for me it's definitely a benefit I like to be able to sleep in a little bit I've been waking up before it gets light outside for years and I don't really want to do it anymore. But anyways, folks, this is why I'm leaving California I Hope this was insightful and interesting to you.

If you want me to make a video on why I chose the State of Florida specifically, give me a comment down below and we'll make another video for you. Make sure to subscribe to the channel and sign up for our free email list down below. You can also follow me on Instagram @ Charli Platus. Have a good one folks and we'll see you in the next video.

Also, you can find my girlfriend Via's Instagram if you go on my profile and you go to one of the pictures I've tagged her in and you can find her anyways. have a good one folks I'll see you in the next video he I think I look so stupid in this video. Oh my goodness No you look beautiful.