“In the first half of 2024, stock pay alone at four major technology companies accounted for almost 10 percent of the state’s total income tax withholding,” the office wrote. “Because this form of compensation is tied to the company’s stock price, it rises when stock prices rise.”

Big Tech’s stock prices boomed in 2024. Bay Area-headquartered Nvidia, Apple, Google and Meta were already humongous companies at the start of the year — as of Thursday, they’ve grown in value by 199%, 19%, 19% and 59%, respectively. Tesla, which has a Palo Alto engineering headquarters and large local workforce, is up 38% year to date. Even some smaller and less well-known Bay Area firms are seeing banner years: Broadcom is up 48%, and AppLovin is up a bewildering 693%.

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All the growth — on paper — is great for California. Companies have to withhold income taxes when employees’ “restricted stock units” vest into actual stocks, which typically happens four times a year. And how much the company withholds goes up with the price of the stock on the day the RSU vests. When the LAO analyzed this type of tax withholding at Apple, Google, Nvidia and Meta in 2023, the adviser found California was raking in “at least $5 billion annually” from the four companies.


California got that much cash this year, and then some. The LAO wrote in Wednesday’s report that income taxes are set to end the current year 20% higher than two years ago. Because California is spending billions on things like health care, education and the criminal justice system, the tech-backed tax windfall is a godsend: It helps to cancel out what the LAO called “atypically high spending growth.”