CEO Says Los Angeles Drives Business Away

Los Angeles - In our series "Saving the California Dream," we've heard tough points of view on doing business in Los Angeles. In this edition, you'll hear some facts from Legal Zoom CEO John Suh, who called LA's bluff and took his business to Glendale.

John Suh
"I love Los Angeles, I love California, I'm a diehard Lakers fan, and we were dragged kicking and screaming out of Los Angeles.

"The city of L.A. has an unusual gross receipts tax and Eric Garcetti was absolutely fantastic in trying to help us through this particular issue, but he was actually blocked by other members of city government so even within the government they were having a lot of problems.

"Over two years we tried to fight this issue and eventually we had to relocate because they were deciding whether to tax us over a million dollars over the period of our lease for being in the city of L.A., and we did the natural thing, we located a few miles outside of it and saved over a million dollars."

"Glendale was amazing. We built out this office from scratch and the landlord paid for it all, millions of dollars to pay for us to relocate.

What politicians have to realize is businesses have choices. They think we're bluffing. They think nothing will change, but when a business is faced in this environment with a million of incremental taxes and it's the best possible time to renegotiate your lease, businesses have and can relocate out of the city. Los Angeles is kind of a microcosm, but more importantly, they're moving out of California, and we gotta fix this problem. We're a mess."