Update, March 28, 2023: According to the Dallas Morning News, Fisher Investments has confirmed that it is moving its headquarters to 6500 International Parkway in Plano, where the company already maintains offices. This article has been revised to reflect this.
In a terse statement released Friday evening, Fisher Investments announced plans to move its corporate HQ from its 150-acre campus in Washington State to the more business- and tax-friendly climes of Texas.
Here’s the statement in its entirety: “In honor of the Washington State Supreme Court’s wisdom and knowledge of the law, and in recognition of whatever it may do next, Fisher Investments is immediately moving its headquarters from Washington State to Texas.”
The sarcasm-laced announcement was made “in protest” of Friday morning’s state Supreme Court decision upholding Washington’s new capital gains tax, according to Oregon Live.
Like Texas and seven other states, Washington state has no income tax. In 2021, its state legislature passed a 7% capital gains tax “on the sale of stocks, bonds, and other high-end assets, with exemptions for the first $250,000 each year and gains from sales of retirement accounts, real estate, and certain small businesses,” Oregon Live noted.
That seems to have been a tax too far for Fisher Investments, which along with its subsidiaries manages over $197 billion in assets globally—over $156 billion for private investors, $39 billion for institutional investors, and $2 billion for U.S. small to mid-sized business retirement plans.
“When the Washington State Supreme Court can make extraordinary decisions and overwhelmingly so—seeming to legislate from the bench versus upholding the state constitution—that could allow for anything in the future and probably will,” the company told the Morning News Monday. “We won’t wait until they impair us, inconsistent with basic concepts of the law, before protecting everyone’s interests.”
Currently, Fisher Investments’ corporate HQ is housed on a 150-acre, multi-building campus in Camas, Washington, a suburb just minutes north of Portland, Oregon.
Fisher already has a strong DFW presence—and its founder lives in Dallas
Ken Fisher [Photo: Fisher Investments]
Fisher already has a strong presence in North Texas. The company has five corporate offices across the U.S., and the only one in the Lone Star State is at 6500 International Parkway in Plano, where it will now place its HQ.
Of the company’s 4,200 employees, over 1,200 work in Dallas-Fort Worth, according to the Morning News, which notes that Ken Fisher—who founded Fisher Investments in 1979 and has an estimated net worth of $6.7 billion—lists Dallas as his residence.
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