Billionaire Tax Refugees Flock to Ritzy Nevada Lake Town
Incline Village at Lake Tahoe has seen boom times before, and the likes of Sergey Brin, Steve Jurvetson and others have ignited another. One resident described it as ‘the nicest San Francisco neighborhood.’
Naveen Rao, a longtime California resident, ascended to a rarefied tier of wealth last year when his startup, Unconventional AI, was valued at $4.5 billion. The company is based in Palo Alto, but with the specter of a new tax on billionaires looming over the state, Rao began considering other places to live.
Last month, he found one: a $20 million mansion in Incline Village, a charming mountain town on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe that has recently seen a fresh influx of the ultrawealthy. A substantial number of the newcomers are people like Rao who are trying to flee the California proposal or other wealth tax measures currently circulating around the country.
“Incline is the nicest San Francisco neighborhood,” Rao said, noting other recent tech arrivals in the area, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who reportedly also moved because of the tax, and SpaceX investor Steve Jurvetson. They join longtime Incline denizens such as Larry Ellison and Workday billionaire David Duffield, who relocated to the enclave many years ago.