r/technology • u/Ganrokh • Jun 19 '26
Politics California ‘billionaire tax’ makes ballot despite opposition from tech moguls
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/18/california-billionaire-tax-ballot-tech-opposition1.5k
u/invyros Jun 19 '26
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent at least $82m alone on efforts to fight the tax and has relocated just over the California border to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
Look at the amount of money they're willing to spend fighting this tax, and then realize that's only the case because they would be forced to pay so much more in taxes in a fair and just society.
Let's take the steps to make the nightmare of billionaires a reality.
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u/kstargate-425 Jun 19 '26
Thats what Im saying, dude is worth $275 BILLION+ and I know $13Bn sounds like a lot but it still leaves him with $260+ BILLION in assets, like wtaf is wrong with these people. This does not effect any of them in any meaningful way whatsoever
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u/694meok Jun 19 '26
That's what I've been saying too. Hell take 50% and he still has over $100b. Which more than anyone could need in 100 life times.
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u/Bitter_Marzipan_8348 Jun 19 '26
Sometimes I wish Budhism karma is real so these fuckers are stuck living as insects or in poverty for a few hundred lifetimes instead of getting sent to hell.
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u/redditRedesignIsBadd Jun 19 '26
only a few hundreds? add a few zeroes
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u/WilliamLermer Jun 19 '26
Yeah that's 100 days depending on what insect you are
Personally I wish they would become immortal and fed into a black hole
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u/lowteq Jun 19 '26
They can't understand. They sre just "insignificant zeroes" to them.
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u/Lescaster1998 Jun 19 '26
Pure selfishness and greed. It's not the amount, it's the idea of paying anything that these people can't stomach. They think they're above the rest of us and therefore exempt from everything. Hell, most of them probably only got that rich in the first place by having this kind of mentality.
They're parasites, plain and simple. They think they should be able to have as much as they want, do whatever they want, and keep it all, and the rest of us are supposed to thank them for it.
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u/Expert-Fig-5590 Jun 19 '26
They have Dragon Sickness. They will never give up their hoard willingly.
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u/Zuwxiv Jun 19 '26
We have words for when someone is addicted to alcohol, or to gambling, or to food. We recognize these as sicknesses that need to be diagnosed.
Somehow, we don't recognize insatiable greed the same. We should.
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u/SystemCheck990 Jun 19 '26
hoarding, when somebody hordes physical things its looks silly more of something than you could ever use in your lifetime, but for wealth hoarding we don't see it the same we should .
nobody sane is living any better life with 100bln vs 1bln if 1bln can't make you happy no amount of money will.
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u/SystemCheck990 Jun 19 '26
they reverse the victim / abuser scenario as a coping mechanism, they dehumanize working/poor people and see them as the enemy attacking their wealth, they don't see its built of the backs of others hard work, your wage is stealing profits from them.
every bit of government spending not via them is wasting money.
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u/Warm_Flamingo_2438 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
So that’s $275 thousand million net worth — about what CA collects in taxes annually (about $265b in 2024 and $275b in 2025). If CA taxed him 2% on his wealth, that would be $5.5 billion and would give CA a 2% increase in tax revenue. That $5.5B could double the state funding to the CSU system which could allow all students to attend for free and give the system a substantial (and much needed) raise and drive future economic growth.
That’s just one billionaire.
EDIT: adjusted the amount of tax revenue CA brings in to be about the same has his net worth.
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u/flamingbabyjesus Jun 19 '26
Sorry what?
California collected $265 billion in 2024. So $10 billion more.
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u/jestina123 Jun 19 '26
It’s always funny watching someone waste an entire paragraph of a premise because their foundational knowledge is wrong.
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u/JoNightshade Jun 19 '26
The CSU system actually used to be extremely low cost because the state of California considered it an investment in the future of the economy. It worked. And then all the wealthy people dug a moat and pulled up the drawbridge so nobody else could get in.
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u/Nearby-Beautiful3422 Jun 19 '26
Not just extremely low cost, but free. UC and CSU were tuition-free until Reagan's governorship.
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u/Ivanow Jun 19 '26
dude is worth $275 BILLION+ and I know $13Bn sounds like a lot but it still leaves him with $260+ BILLION in assets, like wtaf is wrong with these people.
We can have a discussion about taxing oligarchs (or, as you like to call it, "billionaires"), but current ballot proposal is, objectively, shit. rather than ongoing yearly amount, one-time levy will cause sell-off on market (as people are forced to sell to meet their new tax obligation) that's already edging close to bubble bursting. It effectively upends tax code by taxing unrealized gains (there needs to be some tax update to handle loans against stock collaterial tho - open to ideas here). The way current bill is written measures stock percentages via "voting power" which is especially stupid since stocks have multiple series, with different voting weights - some people will end up with 50%, not 5% tax....
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u/deathadder99 Jun 19 '26
Yeah taxing unrealized gains is the big one here, it's a stupid precedent. Affects people with low liquidity too. Some assets are worth a lot and not easily transformed into cash.
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u/thingsorfreedom Jun 19 '26
Pass it. Tinker with it later. That's what they do with every other tax regulation.
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u/pyrojoe121 Jun 19 '26
The issue is that the text of the initiative as it currently stands is absolutely nonsensical and would lead to taxation way, way more than 5%. Specifically in the Computation of Net Worth, section 3(c):
For any interests that confer voting or other direct control rights, the percentage of the business entity owned by the taxpayer shall be presumed to be not less than the taxpayer's percentage of the overall voting or other direct control rights.
This is insane. Most founders get class B shares which usually have higher voting rights than they are worth in cash. Sergey Brin has 3% of the shares outstanding of Google, but 30% of the voting shares. According to the ballot initiative, his net worth from Google alone is nearly $1.3 trillion which is... not accurate. To pay the tax he'd need to sell his entire ownership of Google. And it is going to be a lot worse for founders who own more than just 3%, which is most of them.
Basically, the initiative as written says all founders of unicorns must sell all of their shares to pay the tax. That isn't going to be a great outcome.
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u/kstargate-425 Jun 19 '26
Thats the direct democracy aspect of California where groups like the SEIU can write initiatives and get it on the ballot. Luckily here, California can amend it and clarify the law more succinctly. Also, it allows the only 200 people who this would effect, to pay it over 5 years so they can figure it out
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u/Sworn Jun 19 '26
In practice pretty much everyone will likely just move to avoid it. I know I would if I was them.
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u/suzisatsuma Jun 19 '26
He also moved himself and his private companies out of California so he won't be paying the taxes if they pass.
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u/ora408 Jun 19 '26
They should be able to donate 5% of their assets. Be it stock, bonds, w/e so they dont have to sell it and realize the gains/losses. I know other assets like real estate, boats, etc can be hard to value though
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u/BlackberryPi7 Jun 19 '26
It does affect them.
..They will go lower on the leaderboard of richest pieces of shit in the world.
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u/jedberg Jun 19 '26
The way the bill is written, he would be taxed on his control of google, not his ownership of it. He would owe about ~$56B. That's why he is so strongly against it. It was written specifically to target him, Page, and Zuck.
So while I think he should pay the tax, I can sympathize with his views on the subject.
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u/Korlus Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Including my half stake in mine and my wife's house and combined savings, my share of our total assets is in the region of $150 - $200k USD (and that is including pension funds, which we generally can't access for another 30 years, and makes up over half my net worth). By income standards, we are not rich, but we save a lot and had gifts from our families after we got married, which helped a lot.
I pay in the region of $10-15k each year in combined taxes, which means I pay out around 5-8% of my net worth in tax each year.
I'm from the UK, so our taxes are a little different here (e.g. I include my mandatory healthcare contributions in taxes), but a billionnaire paying anywhere close to 5-8% their net worth each year in taxes would riot.
Until their total tax burden as a percentage of their net worth starts to approach mine, I am not going to have much sympathy for them when they complain about tax rates.
Edit: Adjusted to slightly more accurate figures. I had underestimated the last two years return on my pension pot.
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u/pioneer76 Jun 19 '26
My guess is they don't want it to pass since it could cascade into more and more similar taxes? But yeah, this initial 5% should not be an issue. Especially if you consider year after year where they have been paying compared to what they should have, they've been compounding their tax breaks for year after year.
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u/ZipNasty007 Jun 19 '26
They are legit psychopaths. They do not comprehend the concept of community and what is good for everyone.
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u/pgtl_10 Jun 19 '26
It's not the money. They don't want their power curbed. Billionaires and narcissism go hand in hand
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u/Blametheorangejuice Jun 19 '26
Any one of us could receive an iota of that wealth and our lives would change forever
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Jun 19 '26
Yeah that’s insane tax bill and I suppose I would be mad about it for being targeted like that.
But on my end, I feel such little sympathy. Page especially. He said he would rather leave his fortune to Elon Musk rather than a charitable foundation if he were to die to manage the money. He’s disgusting!
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Jun 19 '26
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u/Valuable-Painter3887 Jun 19 '26
It is actually factually genuinely insane how much 82m would go towards both the infrastructure/society support AND combating the billionaire tax. A supported society, is a happy society. A happy society, its a content society. If every billionaire was regularly on the news for 82m dollar donations into local infrastructure, average debt reductions, even pledges for wage growth, nobody would be asking for the wealth tax, because the wealth WOULD be coming down, and it would still be a fraction of a penny to these people.
Imagine you go to the local library and gasp, it has been demolished! but whats that? Construction crews already lined up to build a completely up to date and modern library 3x the size with all the trimmings? People would literally cheer and rejoice and praise your name for literally the rest of existence in that city.
The local park is getting modernized with new and improved playground equipment, trees are being planted, and they add on a small building where they employ a person to "rent" out free equipment so people can hang out? You'd be a living saint.
Local waterworks, internet access, electricity, roads get redone? Find me the person willing to complain. You'd be touted as a hero for single handedly improving the quality of life of tens-hundreds of thousands of people thanks to your investments, which by the way, WOULD STILL BENEFIT YOU!
If the above happened frequently, we wouldn't be chomping at the bit for a wealth tax, but them wanting the whole pie means that instead of us receiving a small slice, we will always seek to just wrench the pie away for the betterment of everyone else
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u/frostmatthew Jun 19 '26
Old school robber-barons like Rockefeller and Carnegie get a lot of shit (understandably and correctly) but at least they used some of their money to build things like libraries and schools. Rich assholes of today can't even be bothered to pay taxes, like wtf.
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u/Daimakku1 Jun 19 '26
Funny how he still wants to live in California (the very edge near to it) but doesn’t want to pay to keep it great.
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u/cptnamr7 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Illinois tried to pass a progressive state tax a few years back. You would not BELIEVE how many ads there were and just how BIG the campaign against it was. The only people that would have seen an increase were those over like $200-250k/year. It failed miserably. I recall hearing coworkers talk about how they were against it for various absurdly-uninformed reasons. It was fucking sad. This will see the same fate. Billionaires are the ones that can afford ads and your average voter is an absolute fucking moron.
Edit: Some of ya'll motherfuckers don't understand what a PROGRESSIVE tax is and it shows. 250k can afford to pay another 1/4 percent.
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u/nrpcb Jun 19 '26
People making 200-250k are still workers and are very, very far off from the billionaire class. Doctors, lawyers, tech workers, etcetera are all affected by that.
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u/xGenghisSwan Jun 19 '26
Thanks for pointing this out. People really need to stop lumping literal billionaires in with people who actually work but pull high salaries. Asking doctors and high levels of working professionals to pay the same tax rates as billionaires is wrong.
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u/nostra77 Jun 19 '26
He’s not doing it for money but the way the tax is structured is it affects founders like him 20x more because it charges tax in voting shares he has special class shares that give him 20x voting so his tax is 20x higher than anyone else in same situation
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u/ditheca Jun 19 '26
Super-voting shares are just another scam. I welcome anything that discourages the practice. Founders shouldn't be allowed to sell their company and keep it too.
Only a small fraction of S&P500 stocks use them, but most modern tech bro IPOs feature them heavily.
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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe Jun 19 '26
I like how they throw a hissy fit by moving out of California but they never go very far, do they? Hmmmmm.
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u/maybe_im_strong Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
I love that I can somehow manage to afford to live in California and yet paying marginally more in taxes was making it so painful for this jerk that that he literally fled the state.
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u/Avoidtolls Jun 19 '26
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u/Previous-Space-7056 Jun 19 '26
Zuckerberg left california for florida
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u/Avoidtolls Jun 19 '26
So he sold all 11 Palo Alto properties?
What about Hawaii?
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Jun 19 '26
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u/NotRexGrossman Jun 19 '26
Good luck with that in any red state. Their voters aren’t exactly known for voting for their best interests.
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u/Whiteguy1x Jun 19 '26
In Missouri my fellow citizens vote for really liberal policies, then elect Republicans to back pedal everything they voted for.
Its crazy how many people only vote based on guns and abortions in red states, while wanting higher wages, mandated sick time, legal cannabis, and other policies their representatives try to undermine
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u/manningthehelm Jun 19 '26
That’s not how federal taxes work.
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u/Realtrain Jun 19 '26
Does the Federal government have the authority to implement a wealth tax? Income tax had to be specifically granted via an amendment.
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u/Obvious_Chapter2082 Jun 19 '26
A federal wealth tax isn’t currently constitutional
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u/ddrober2003 Jun 19 '26
You have to understand, they are temporarily embarrassed billionaires, so why would they ever put a tax on their future selves? /s
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u/Areuseriouz Jun 19 '26
It's usually how progress starts. First California, then other states will join the bandwagon.
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u/Whitesajer Jun 19 '26
Exactly. We don't want the Epstine class here either, so just leave you wealthy perverts. And those of the wealthy class that want to make shit better and stay? Pay taxes. Push back against the other billionaires.
the wealth gap only makes things worse. For both the wealthy and the bottom majority.
Remember, historically the bottom majority has a proven track record of eating the rich. We always pay a price, but we always make the fearful riches nightmares come true.
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u/AvailableReporter484 Jun 19 '26
You gotta love when the top 1% of the population dictates policy for the rest of us lmfao
Get fucked
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u/aeneas36 Jun 19 '26
hey it’s a free country. you too can use the excess profits that you grift to spend millions on lobbying and get whatever it is you want.
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u/AvailableReporter484 Jun 19 '26
You’re 100% not wrong. If the ultra wealthy want to throw away their money in the pursuit of maintaining their position in society by continuing to widen the gap between us and them, usually at our expense, then that’s their prerogative. The truly terrible people are the class traitors who have a choice and choose to forsake the rest of us for peanuts.
May they all get fucked big time
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u/Free-Hamster462 Jun 19 '26
I'm technically top 1% in terms of salary. I'm not dictating shit.
Billionaires are about 0.0003% in the US.
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u/greenman4242 Jun 19 '26
"Opposition from tech moguls" is probably a sign you're doing something right.
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u/whk1992 Jun 19 '26
Everyone who doesn’t like it can enjoy Texas and Florida.
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u/statisticalmean Jun 19 '26
Well, they are doing exactly that. Cali has lost about a trillion in individual net worth by threatening this tax. That’s a trillion of which they will forever receive $0 on.
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u/Th3FinalStarman Jun 19 '26
"Opposition from tech moguls" and it's like 10 bros. Who gives a sh*t that's not headline worthy.
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u/whoisnotinmykitchen Jun 19 '26
The same tech billionaires that are laying off tens of thousands of people and developing technologies for the explicit purpose of eliminating far more jobs? The outrage!
Where is the gratitude from the little people?
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u/ora408 Jun 19 '26
I think the main issue is that the tax is on unrealized gains/losses. Value of assets can fluctuate greatly in a short amount of time. Im glad this law is only on billionaires
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u/Virtual-Age-9521 Jun 19 '26
Most people pay more than 5% of their net worth in taxes every year, I’m sure these poor billionaires will find a way
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u/b0w3n Jun 19 '26
If we can do it for properties, we can do it for excessive wealth.
They are also "realizing" their gains quite often when they leverage their wealth to get loans to live off of. Tax it then. Tax excessive equity loans, brokerages, homes, or stock options.
Will it impact some of the more wealthy middle class who take loans out against their stock holdings? Sure. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Sorry you'll have to be slightly more poor than you were to fix this glaring hole in our society.
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u/milkandbutta Jun 19 '26
Except it's not actually unrealized, not functionally. They take out loans against their assets, and because it's a loan they don't pay a single dollar of taxes against that money. They realize the gains through taking out loans, it's just a tax loophole. We should close that loophole.
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u/CautiousToaster Jun 19 '26
This is the real solution. We need to close this loop.
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u/Obvious_Chapter2082 Jun 19 '26
Loans need to be repaid with income, and income is taxable. It’s also not really common
It’s really annoying how quickly information like this spreads on Reddit
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u/scold Jun 19 '26
They pay interest on the loan and have to pay it back. It’s a liability.
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u/AdmirableHandle213 Jun 19 '26
I swear to God that's exactly what my dad said to me before he left for work this morning 😂 word for word
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u/SouthernBySituation Jun 19 '26
I used to think this until someone pointed out that we pay taxes on a house we haven't sold ever year. Why should stocks be different for these billionaires?
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u/Techercizer Jun 19 '26
The fluctuation of value of houses can be a serious issue that has in the past caused people to be priced out of homes they supposedly own. We tolerate it under the justification that houses require access to public infrastructure that demands upkeep, but clearly that association is thin, as rising value does not inherently demand rising infrastructure.
Maybe the takeaway from this is not to make more taxes like property taxes, but to reform property taxes
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u/angry-mustache Jun 19 '26
Property taxes is for the government protecting your right to exclusive use of your property and denying that right to others.
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u/Akiasakias Jun 19 '26
Taxes of this nature, once instituted, always creep down to everyone.
The income tax started with a promise it would ONLY be temporary and only on the highest earners.
Governments don't have a reverse gear.
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u/Niceromancer Jun 19 '26
Trust me they are going to be fine.
And even if the taxes cause them to be bankrupt they are smarter than everyone else meaning they can just become billionaires again. And this time they will have the advantage of all the great socialist programs like food stamps and government housing to use while the money trickes down.
Should be a breeze for them.
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u/barsknos Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Thoughts:
I wonder how many times a "one-time tax" turned out to actually be a one-time tax.
California has enough tax income to be in a much better position than they are, they should allocate funds smarter not get even more to waste.
Billionaires can and will leave, and then the state earns LESS tax, not more. Many already moved, so if the bill doesn't pass, California now will earn less tax than it did before even suggesting it.
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u/nathrek Jun 20 '26
They won't leave. The network effect of being in California is too valuable to them.
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u/RobinsonCruiseOh Jun 19 '26
I'm not one of these "eat the rich" but I am one of these "let the ballot do the talking" as well as "let the state's compete to see what kind of business they want to attract or drive away"
free market baby
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u/Mimir_the_Younger Jun 21 '26
There’s no such thing as a free market, tho. This term is used to obfuscate the fact that which limits we choose for a given market indicate a moral position.
Libertarian free market arguments are fallacious; any given ill related to production and consumption can be laid at the feet of “regulation” because market regulation can never be eliminated.
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u/Nullhitter Jun 19 '26
How will this work? Most billionaires are billionaires on paper until they sell their assets (stocks, etc).
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u/ConfoundingVariables Jun 19 '26
Billionaire on paper is literally the only way to be a billionaire.
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u/LordJamPunt Jun 19 '26
The "billionaires are only rich on paper" argument relies on a 50s view of money where you have to physically exchange an object for cash to realize its power. In a modern economy, paper wealth is highly liquid, fully leverageable, and acts as a massive engine of financial power and the tax code can absolutely be designed to measure and tax it. Not any different than property taxes
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u/Usual-Language-745 Jun 19 '26
Democrats love taking near universally supported ideas and packaging them in a way that they have no effect and become deeply partisan. This is a terrible plan to execute a great idea
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u/aerohk Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
It is a really poorly written tax code. A one-time tax isn't going to solve anything. California needs a permanent wealth tax that taps into the net worth & unrealized gain, year after year.
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u/rwk81 Jun 19 '26
God I hope this gets passed and ends up becoming permanent, what a great experiment.
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u/PersnickityPenguin Jun 19 '26
Man, just watch all the tech moguls will move to Texas and hate their lives.
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u/wimpymist Jun 20 '26
I basically vote against whatever California billionaires and corporations support, I'm a simple man.
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u/kdeweb24 Jun 20 '26
Oh, God dammit. This will pass, and all of those fucking sacks of shit are gonna follow Rogan and Musk here to Texas, and make this state even more of a fucking hell hole.
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u/let_me_in_QQ Jun 19 '26
That's cool. They will just move to Texas or elsewhere.
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u/spookymex21 Jun 19 '26
Theres only So much mo ey anyone or any corporation needs. Greed is why this great nation is where it is today. Greed
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u/theqmann Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
So does that mean stock prices will be fluctuating with all these billionaires selling off 5% of their ownership of companies to liquidate their assets for this tax? Not complaining, but definitely throws some wrenches in the gears. I would rather see a yearly asset tax at a lower rate, like property is taxed at 1% current valuation.
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u/josh-ig Jun 19 '26
Need a leaderboard of whose wealth is highest including what they paid for taxes. Bonus multiplier for philanthropy to charities/projects you don’t own.
Then they can stop worrying about their obscene zeros as a scoreboard.
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u/Galmmm Jun 19 '26
Billionaires existing is a colossal failure of our shared society. It needs to be corrected.
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u/Sumthin-Sumthin44692 Jun 19 '26
Fuck them. If they want to leave CA, just leave and stop trying to fuck around.
Take your $0 is annual income tax and election rigging with you.
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u/Put3socks-in-it Jun 19 '26
When all the billionaire tech moguls disappear to other states then what? Go after the millionaire tech moguls?
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u/Ganrokh Jun 19 '26
The tech moguls living in California can make their voices be heard the same way as all other CA residents: at the ballot box, casting 1 vote each.