The proposed billionaire wealth tax is trailing in California, with voters casting significantly more ballots against it. "No" is leading by more than 850,000 votes, putting the measure on track for defeat.

this California wealth tax thing is just incredible. so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time). polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it). there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate. supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right? well as it turns out, they did. a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative. proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave. just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues. but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion. so when you add it all up you get: + $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated) - $69b in present value of lost future income taxes = - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time. and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes. [1]:

“California’s proposed wealth tax, Proposition 40, is being marketed as a tax on billionaires. In reality, it is a threat to all Californians." “It’s ultimately a tax on American enterprise, with ripple effects throughout the California economy that makes it harder to build the next generation of businesses here.” "California should make sure the kitchen table remains the place where the American Dream begins, not where it ends." Read my latest op-ed👇

Billionaires may defeat the wealth tax on the ballot in California, but they shouldn’t confuse short-term success with longer-term trends. @Erika_D_Smith says the fight over taxing the ultrarich is just beginning (via @opinion)

California’s Billionaire Wealth Tax: Healthcare vs. Greed On November 3rd, at a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, the people of California will decide whether to pass a 5% wealth tax on more than 200 billionaires in California who are worth $2.2 trillion. This initiative, known as Proposition 40, would raise enough revenue to prevent 3 million working-class Californians from losing the healthcare they currently have as a result of Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. Last year, these billionaires became $500 billion richer. As a result of a rigged tax code, they pay a lower effective tax rate than a plumber or a nurse. The greed of these billionaires is really extraordinary. Instead of paying their fair share of taxes, billionaires are now spending $229 million — 0.01% of their wealth — to oppose a 5% tax on their wealth. The effort against this initiative is being led by the 4th wealthiest man in the world, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, who is spending over $100 million to defeat it. If the California billionaire wealth tax is passed, Mr. Brin would owe $13.5 billion more in taxes. But don't feel sorry for him. He would still have $256.5 billion left over to feed his family. (And don’t let him fool you into thinking he left the state. Mr. Brin owns at least four mansions in California worth some $103.5 million. Tax experts have made it clear that he would owe this tax.) It is also being opposed by Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel. These 5 Big Tech billionaires are worth over $646 billion combined. Dangerously, many oligarchs today believe that they have the divine right to rule and that they are masters of the universe. They live lives completely separate from ordinary people and are obsessed with becoming even richer and more powerful than they already are. The result: They would rather let people in California suffer or die because they can’t afford to go to a doctor than pay their fair share of taxes. Let's be clear: These billionaires have more money than they could spend in over 100 lifetimes. How many mansions do they need? How many yachts do they need? How many private jets do they need? So today I say to the billionaire class: Control your greed. Show a bit of compassion to working families and their kids in California. Instead of spending $229 million on TV ads against this wealth tax, I have a better idea: Start paying your fair share of taxes. In 1933, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” What Justice Brandeis said was accurate 93 years ago. It is even more accurate today. Our job now is to tell the Oligarchs in California that we will no longer tolerate their insatiable greed. We will choose healthcare for working families and their children over obscene wealth for the richest people in the world. Let us stand together in solidarity. They have the money. We have the people. Let's win this struggle.