Silicon Valley Billionaires Panic Over California’s Proposed Wealth Tax

Did California lose Larry Page? The Google and Alphabet cofounder, who left day-to-day operations in 2019, has seen his net worth soar in the years since—from around $50 billion at the time of his departure to somewhere approximating $260 billion today. (Leaving his job clearly didn’t hurt his wallet.) Last year, a proposed ballot initiative in California threatened billionaires like Page with a one-time 5 percent wealth tax—prompting some of them to consider leaving the state before the end of the year, when the tax, if passed, would retroactively kick in. Page seems to have been one of those defectors; The Wall Street Journal reported that he recently spent more than $170 million on two homes in Miami. The article also indicated his cofounder Sergey Brin also might become a Florida man.

The Google guys, formerly California icons, are only two of approximately 250 billionaires subject to the plan. It’s not certain whether many of them have departed for Florida, Texas, New Zealand, or a space station. But it is clear that a lot of vocal billionaires and other super rich people are publicly losing their minds about the proposal, which will appear on the November ballot if it garners around 875,000 signatures. Hedge fund magnate Bill Ackman calls it “catastrophic.” Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, boasted that he already pays plenty of taxes, so much so that one year he claims his tax return broke the IRS computer.

Still, when considered as a percentage of income, even the big sums paid by some billionaires are way lower than the tax rates many teachers, accountants, and plumbers pay every year. If Musk, currently worth an estimated $716 billion, had to pay a 5 percent wealth tax, he’d probably manage to scrape by with a $680 billion nest egg—enough to buy Ford, General Motors, Toyota, and Mercedes, and still remain the world’s richest person. (In any case, he’s safe from California taxes; a few years ago he moved to Texas.)

California’s politicians, including Governor Gavin Newsom, are generally opposed to the initiative. A glaring exception is Representative Ro Khanna, who said to WIRED in a statement that he’s on board with “a modest wealth tax on billionaires to deal with staggering inequality and to make sure people have healthcare.”

Khanna might pay a price for taking on the wealthy and may face a primary challenge backed by oligarch bucks because of it. A safer position for Bay Area politicians is the one taken by San Jose mayor Matt Mahan. He recently posted a tweet stream opposing the bill, saying that if California passed the wealth tax it would be cutting off its nose to spite its face. When I speak to Mahan, he emphasizes the risk of California standing alone in taxing the net worth of billionaires. “It puts at risk our innovation economy that is the real engine of economic growth and opportunity,” he says. (Mahan isn’t super rich, but he is billionaire-adjacent: He once was CEO of a company cofounded by former Facebook president Sean Parker.)

Because of the mobility of rich people, California does have real worries about the impact of a state wealth tax. Not being a billionaire myself, I find the idea baffling—moving away from one’s ideal home simply to avoid a tax that makes no impact on your living situation seems, to use Mahan’s words, like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Also, I don’t see why an exodus of billionaires necessarily means the end of Silicon Valley as the heart of tech innovation. If you want to become a billionaire, there’s no place better than the Bay Area, with an ecosystem that nurtures innovative businesses. That’s not changing. A few years ago, some tech people moved to Miami, claiming it was going to become the new Silicon Valley. That didn’t happen.