State taxes can be dodged by moving. Federal (US) taxes are supposed to be filed each year no matter where US-ians live. They can work games to not pay the US but that either requires "no formal income" or living where taxes are higher than the US.
Or, I guess, just don't deal with the US and either don't go there, or hope to not get caught.
Those who pay the tax will assume the "one-off" label is false: if it works once, it will be repeated.
On my block alone, are the houses of (at least) two "49-percenters". 183 or a few more days of the year the owners are at their second homes in Arizona or Nevada, and gathering gas station receipts to prove it, while their California houses sit empty -- all just to avoid our state income tax.
How about that as a poster-child for misallocation of physical capital?
If you read the article, the author frames the discussion around a retroactive tax in California applying to those resident in California as of January 1, 2026 so that it cannot be dodged by moving. Also, the words “US”, “US-ian”, “American” appear zero times. The word “federal” appears one time.
I think this comment is a little off-topic.