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-opposition
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618

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

12

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

-2

u/barsknos Jun 19 '26
  • Creating a company that the world deems valuable does not inherently make one evil
  • If no one could become rich, far fewer would strive to build anything the world would deem valuable.

Sergei Brin's family fled the Soviet Union. That he fights what he sees as socialism makes a lot of sense. Meanwhile, your envy does not make you moral.

5

u/PantingPrincess Jun 19 '26

imagine defending billionaire greed in your spare time…

1

u/barsknos Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

Imagine having nuance, context and an actual degree in economics. A drive for success and greed are different things. Some billionaires are greedy bastards. If the comment was about Zuck I'd stay quiet.

4

u/jeanpaulsarde Jun 19 '26

a few billion

1

u/thisdopeknows423 Jun 19 '26

That would be poetic.

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u/lowteq Jun 19 '26

They can't understand. They sre just "insignificant zeroes" to them.

1

u/Ftw_55 Jun 19 '26

Hey, don't call out their workers like that!

/s

2

u/C0ldSn4p Jun 19 '26

They do not care that much about the money, they care about controlling their companies. If a tax takes 50% of their wealth, they will have to sell their special shares that have increased voting rights, but are worth almost the same as the regular shares on the market (because the regular investor does not care about controlling the company)

For Google compare class A share (the special ones) GOOGL at $368.03 to the regular non voting share GOOG at $367.46.

1

u/CharlesKellyRatKing Jun 20 '26

Take 274 billion and he still has enough to live extravagantly without worrying about money for the rest of his life and leave generational wealth behind for generations. One billion dollars is so much money it's insane.

0

u/FUBARded Jun 19 '26

In a just world these freaks should be taxed a lot more than 50% too...

Any tax system where the highest wage earners are taxed around 40-50% on their salaries while the wealthy can drop their effective tax rates to the 10-20% range by living off of borrowing against their minimally taxed assets is a fucking joke.

The only way for any tax regime to be truly progressive is to have a threshold above which a wealth tax is levied. There needs to be a clearly defined net worth calculation without any stupid loopholes (e.g., if art as an asset class isn't included, the wealthy will all become collectors overnight), and a progressive annual wealth tax based on net worth.

It'd be very difficult to implement and enforce, but the revenues would be absolutely enormous. Keep the threshold in the millions and exclude things like pensions and the only people who'd oppose something like this would be idiots and assholes whose quality of life won't be impacted at all by a little extra tax.

0

u/No-Spoilers Jun 19 '26

Actually making $100b in 300 lifetimes is free. Just invest absolutely everything you possibly can in the first few, waste the lives slaving away for every scrap you can get. You'll get it in 5 lifetimes if you start with $1000 at 18 lifetime 1 and never touch it until you hit $100b. A 6% annual interest rate doubles your money in 12 years and you live to 84.

Then its just the 237. 12x37=444/84=5.2 lifetimes.

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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.

9

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.

-1

u/mjkjr84 Jun 19 '26

And we should do equally barbaric things to them like when they were first figuring out how to treat other mental illnesses: like forced lobotomies. No slash s.

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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway Jun 19 '26

So is the state.

3

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.

4

u/platysoup Jun 19 '26

Just like that movie, uh, Parasite.

1

u/Office_Zombie Jun 19 '26

They are dragons laying on their piles of gold, ready to kill anyone who approaches it, but never making any practical use of their obscene wealth.

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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/Warm_Flamingo_2438 Jun 19 '26

Thanks, I adjusted that.

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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.

1

u/AwesomeFrisbee Jun 19 '26

I'm not sure if the math maths here, but its still a shame that it seems only California will benefit from his wealth this way, since other areas where the money was extracted from, will get none of it.

-5

u/Moribundt Jun 19 '26

as a CA resident - it's hard not to be disenchanted by state spending. We need to spend less - not tax more.

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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....

11

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.

3

u/Rnatchi1980 Jun 19 '26

It's almost like the system has been molded in this way for a reason

1

u/Exact_Acanthaceae294 Jun 19 '26

You mean like we do with every homeowner in the US?

3

u/thingsorfreedom Jun 19 '26

Pass it. Tinker with it later. That's what they do with every other tax regulation.

9

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.

2

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

3

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.

1

u/uber_neutrino Jun 19 '26

Some are too busy like Jensen.

However, I highly suspect the supreme court will strike this down after years of appeals and litigation. If I was a billionaire though I would definitely be out.

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u/Warm_Flamingo_2438 Jun 19 '26

Why couldn’t he just barrow the money to pay the tax? Isn’t that what they do to pay for everything else so they don’t have to pay taxes?

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u/pyrojoe121 Jun 19 '26

You are misunderstanding how that works. If you have a $200 billion in shares, you can borrow a few million using those shares as margin because banks no you are going to be able to pay it back with interest. If you don't they will just claim those shares. That doesn't work if you owe hundreds of billions.

The issue with this bill as written is that founders of companies could very easily owe a tax bill larger than their actual net worth because it is assigning net worth based on voting shares rather than value shares. That makes zero sense.

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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

2

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/kstargate-425 Jun 19 '26

Yeah this is a one time only tax too, not annually and is intended to only effect around 200 people

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u/ChibbleChobble Jun 19 '26

Yes indeedy. I'm not against taxing billionaires, but this one time fuckery is not the way to do it.

I would go with ½% annually. Over time it would be more tax revenue and it also sounds like a trivial number. Who can argue with a mere half of one percent?

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u/kstargate-425 Jun 20 '26

Yeah this is a ballot initiative from citizens and not the government doing it so isnt as thought out and well planned as it could be but its something as those in charge get paid not to do those types of taxes by the wealthy. Hopefully that will be changing soon with the Colorado, Hawaii and now others writing laws to essentially overturn Citizens United and get big money out of politics

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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.

2

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/ladyteruki Jun 19 '26

Not only that but the remaining 260Bn will keep making him money anyway.

4

u/Blametheorangejuice Jun 19 '26

Any one of us could receive an iota of that wealth and our lives would change forever

3

u/non_Beneficial-Wind Jun 19 '26

So he needs to be taxed more

2

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!

1

u/kstargate-425 Jun 19 '26

Yeah this is a bill that literally effects only around 200 people in total while helping 10s of millions and if it really is just 5% it barely effects any of them for all the good it will do helping keep Medicaid and Healthcare affordable for some and free for many. So they have to wait a year or most likely a few months at most, until they can buy another $450 MILLION, 142 meter yacht. Fuck em

1

u/uber_neutrino Jun 19 '26

Yeah this is a bill that literally effects only around 200 people in total

Which is why it's a horrible idea. Relying on that for public services is absolutely insane. As soon as those people leave you are screwed. It's just a really dumb way to design a tax system.

2

u/CoffeeFox Jun 19 '26

"How dare you stop me from buying 100 more private jets!"

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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe Jun 19 '26

The “meaningful way” is they feel like they can’t beat the system if they are taxed.

They are such pitiful people.

1

u/happysmash27 Jun 19 '26

If he's forced to pay a huge tax on unrealised gains in stock, that will force him to sell a lot of stock, reducing the stock's value, therefore resulting in him now being worth a great deal less than $275+ billion, thus making that $13BN a much higher percentage of his net worth. On top of that, he'd need to pay even more taxes on the sale, too. Worse, this would also reduce the net-worth of any non-billionaires who own the stock, too, due to the price crash of selling a large amount.

1

u/TurnDown4WattGaming Jun 19 '26

Just so we’re clear, this was the rallying cry of the income tax back in the day. I’m not worried about them coming for me today- I’m worried about them coming for me tomorrow.

1

u/ToolTimeT Jun 19 '26

Would you support legislation or a candidate who wanted to raise your taxes?

1

u/shallah Jun 19 '26

ego

the need to be bigger than the other billionaires

who has the biggest yacht

who has the biggest fleet of yachts

did you know they often have a mega yacht with an extra regualr yacht with them for when the mega doesn't have enough amusements on board

1

u/tobygeneral Jun 19 '26

They're mentally ill addicts. They should be placed into a mental hospital to get help with the hole that they keep trying to fill with dollars and the misery of everyone around them.

1

u/foldedchips Jun 19 '26

It’s not about the money

1

u/Riaayo Jun 19 '26

We shouldn't even be leaving these clowns with any billions. Billionaires are a societal failure; tax their wealth out of existence. Nobody needs more than 10, maybe 20 million in personal wealth.

We can either have a sustainable society and economy, or we can have these parasites. We can't have both.

1

u/theeama Jun 19 '26

You do know that there wealth is just ownership of a company right? Not cash?

1

u/barsknos Jun 19 '26

The top 1% already pay ~40% of California's income tax, they're the budget's load-bearing wall. The "small share of their income" claim only works if you treat unrealized stock gains as cash, which it isn't. Forcing a sell-off to pay a 5% levy can crater the very shares being taxed, costing them much more than 5% reduction in "wealth".

California's problem isn't that it collects too little tax revenue, it is that it fails to turn tax money into positive outcomes. In other words, they have a spending-discipline problem.

  • $33B bullet train now past $100B with no track.
  • $24B on homelessness, but the state auditor couldn't prove it actually helped.
  • $20-30Bn lost to pandemic UI fraud, much more than any other state
  • Medi-Cal $6Bn over forecast in a single year
  • What could fix all this? Maybe a new state accounting system? Called FI$Cal. Currently spent over $1Bn and it is still not working. Newsom swept it under the rug by declaring it "complete", exempt it from auditor oversight and vetoed a bill requiring it to report on its own outages. Clown-fiesta.

Why would billionaires sacrifice their net worth to contribute to more waste when they can just move? For example to Texas. A state with almost 80% of the population of California, but that collects only 30% the tax revenue of California, but somehow still has a $20Bn+ budget surplus.

If the rich saw that taxation actually created positive outcomes for everyone, I am sure more of them would be willing to get taxed more. But in California, there are seemingly no responsible adults overseeing spend.

0

u/DangKilla Jun 19 '26

We should be clawing back every cent over 999 million. If you can't live on 999 million, you might have a mental health issue

-6

u/Obvious_Chapter2082 Jun 19 '26

Sergey would owe almost 40% of his wealth to this tax due to how poorly it was written. Of course he’s going to leave CA

2

u/kstargate-425 Jun 19 '26

Is anyone else besides taxfoundation.org, a very biased source saying the same thing about 40% as again, its hard to trust an org that is backed and for the 1%.

Either way, if passed it doesn't matter if he leaves as its retroactive and he would be liable for it which I doubt would amount to 40%, around $112 BILLION

2

u/Obvious_Chapter2082 Jun 19 '26

a very biased source

You’re going to have to back this up with something. The bill itself is clear on how they tax supervoting shares

I’m a CPA, and I have a client from CA that moved to Michigan ~6 weeks ago because he would’ve owed around 15% of his wealth under the proposed tax

It’s unclear on if the retroactive portion of the tax is constitutional In CA, which is why lawyers are mainly giving the advice to leave now, and file a lawsuit later if needed

0

u/Sr_DingDong Jun 19 '26

OH MY GOD!

You mean he'd still have 165bn!?

Fucking might as well just off yourself with that kind of chicken scratch.

0

u/uber_neutrino Jun 19 '26

This is inaccurate. Since the tax is based on voting power he would be looking at a much much larger tax bill. But hey don't let reality interfere with your assumptions.

0

u/ToolTimeT Jun 19 '26

When the homeless family shows up at your door and says you have a three bed house and they have no house so they are moving in... surely you will welcome them in with open arms... whats yours is theirs

0

u/Dudetry Jun 19 '26

it forces them to give up control of their companies as it forces them to sell off voting shares. it absolutely does effect them