California’s counting on an IPO tax windfall. Several factors are complicating the equation

California expects a major tax windfall from upcoming IPOs of tech companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, but the actual revenue may be lower than previous tech IPOs because modern employees have access to tax-reduction strategies (like donating pre-IPO stock to donor-advised funds, which are charitable giving accounts) and because these companies structure their stock compensation differently than older tech firms did.