Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company will move its corporate headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas.

It’s the latest instance of a high tech firm leaving the Golden State – and its high tax burden – for the comparatively low tax, more business friendly confines of Texas:

California levies some of the highest personal income taxes in the country on its wealthy residents, but Texas has no personal income tax.

Tesla is not the first company to move its headquarters out of California to Texas. Oracle and Hewlett Packard are among the tech giants who decided to make that move last year, for example.

Texas has been actively recruiting companies via its Texas Economic Development Act offering tax breaks to put new facilities in the state. Austin, with a top tech university and cultural events like South by Southwest, is a draw for tech employers.

The company will still have operations in California, but the boss, and his big portfolio of stock options, and the HQ are heading to low-tax Texas.

Now if Tesla could jettison its penchant for corporate welfare, we’d really be getting somewhere:

Tesla has generally garnered a huge amount of support from the state of California since it was founded there in 2003. It has enjoyed grant funding, tax breaks, incentives and favorable policies from the likes of the California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission and California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority, among others.

The company isn’t alone in taking taxpayer money. Far from it. But the sooner American companies kick their addictions to handouts, the better off they, their customers, and taxpayers, will be.