Why don't the ultra-wealthy just leave high-tax states?

David, you saw all this reporting on Mark Zuckerberg and uh kind of the schadenfreude around whether he was going to leave the state because of the wealth tax, issuing a new class of shares at Meta to try to stave some of that off and make sure he doesn't have to dilute his voting.

Mark Zuckerberg might be in a bit of a class of his own, but there is a legitimate question here. What actually gets an ultra high net worth individual to move? Is it just that top rate tax or are there more factors here? Is it total cost of doing business, total cost of living? When these people when when high net worth clients of yours, when other people start talking about moving, what's actually the thing driving them? What makes that decision?

Well, I I think that everybody, just just like you and I, love our quality of life, right? That's the first judge. But many people will look at the tax and say, man, I need to get out of this state. And then they realize, well, my family's here, my business or my workplace is here, my children go to school here. I have I have all these ties to the area that I live in. And so they have to make this choice between do I want to save this tax, this money, or do I want to leave everything I've known? And depending on what motivates you the most is going to make that decision, but it I think it's one of the hardest decisions for most people, especially, I mean, you look at a a Mark Zuckerberg as you mentioned, who obviously is in a class of his own. I mean, billionaires is a different class, but he could choose to live anywhere in in the world, quite frankly. And he lives in California. Now, why he lives there, obviously is dependent upon his quality of living and obviously his, I wouldn't say it's his employment because he's not necessarily an employee, but it is his business, his business is there. And so he has to make this tough decision and uh fortunate for somebody like him and I don't want to make this sound positive, but he gets to make this choice because he's got favorable boards and things in place. But many, many, many of our clients are considering this move but but they always take into account the quality of life first.

David, a lot of these are going to be all of these are going to be voted on next week, but they're not going to come into effect if they pass for for a little while. There's going to be a decent lag there. When these kind of measures come up on the ballot and if if we assume they do pass, do you expect there to be a real kind of capital flight and, you know, high net worth flight from these states ahead of implementation? Is that something you really think we will see if some of these measures come to fruition?

Well, I mean, I think there'll be some, but you you still have to look that many of these go kind of retroactive to the year 2026, January. Uh some of these will come in 28 and 27, but um as an example in in California, it's going back to January 1st. So there's nothing anybody can do if they haven't already done something, it's it's that's it. Now, next year is a different year, they have a decision to make, but I wouldn't make a a specific move if I was advising somebody, I'd say we'd want to be prepared just like you would be for a storm or a hurricane or you would just say, hey, we got to be prepared, but we don't make any big moves until we have concrete evidence that this thing is coming. And we should be thinking ahead because not always do you have to leave a state to maybe lower your tax rate. There are many different investments, different strategies that can lower a tax rate that don't require you to move. And those are conversations everybody should be having. I mean, regardless if you're a millionaire or a billionaire,