California’s Proposed “Billionaire Tax” Just Cost the State $1 Trillion in Wealth
As the resident “bird flu” expert, I will simply note that California’s proposed Billionaire Tax has turned into a live‑action parable about killing the Golden Goose.
For years, California politicians have tried to impose their progressive agenda on the rest of the country. The electric-vehicle mandate, which was adopted by 12 other states at one point, is a great example of policy arrogance thrust upon a mostly unwilling nation.
But Karma has finally come calling, and it looks like it is going to be quite ugly. It came in the form of a “Billionaire Tax”.
The organizers thought they were being clever by backdating the tax to January 1st of this year, despite the fact that the vote won’t be held until November.
The Billionaire Tax Act, which could be added to the state’s general election ballot in November, would impose a one-time tax of 5% on the total wealth of California tax residents whose net worth is $1 billion or more. While new taxes typically take effect after they’re approved, the proposed billionaire tax would apply to those who are California residents as of Jan. 1, 2026. The retroactive date left little time for California’s estimated 200 to 250 billionaires to change their tax residency after they first learned of the potential tax in December.
“The reason they did this is obvious,” said Christopher Manes of Manes Law. “If they had made the date in November, after passage, you’d have 200 people who could get out in time and save millions of dollars.”
As my colleague Mary Chastain noted, Gov. Gavin Newsom was against the plan.
However, the entrepreneurs who created companies that then generated their wealth decided to opt out of taxes if it passes this fall. Instantly, $1 trillion worth of state wealth vanished.
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya says California’s proposed billionaire tax is accelerating an exodus of ultra-wealthy residents, a shift he argues will worsen and not solve the state’s budget deficit.
Palihapitiya, who has been tracking capital flight from the Golden State, said California has so far lost an estimated $1 trillion.
“We had $2T of billionaire wealth just a few weeks ago. Now, 50% of that wealth has left – taking their income tax revenue, sales tax revenue, real estate tax revenue and all their staffs (and their salaries and income taxes) with them,” Palihapitiya wrote on X on Sunday.Even as the measure remains under consideration for the November statewide ballot, some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures warn it could trigger an exodus of founders and capital.
For example, Peter Thiel accelerated his relocation plans to Miami.
California tech billionaire Peter Thiel announced last week that he had “established a significant presence in Miami over the last several years, maintaining a personal residence in the city since 2020” and an office for his Founders Fund venture capital firm since 2021. Attorneys told CNBC that at least two other unnamed California billionaires have moved or made plans to move since the end of last year.
A number of others also moved elsewhere.
The recently departed reportedly include In-n-Out Burger owner and heiress Lynsi Snyder, PayPal co-founder and conservative donor Peter Thiel, Venture Capitalist David Sacks, co-founder of Craft Ventures, and Google co-founder Larry Page, who recently purchased $173 million worth of waterfront property in Miami’s Coconut Grove. Thank goodness he landed on his feet in these tough times.
According to the New York Post, 20 other billionaires are reassessing their need to stay in the “Golden State”.
Laughably, the Los Angeles Times published a piece complaining about wealth flight.
“California made them rich” https://t.co/cPeZViYc5w pic.twitter.com/iPlUJCVLg3
— litquidity (@litcapital) January 11, 2026
As the resident “bird flu” expert, I will simply note that California’s proposed Billionaire Tax has turned into a live‑action parable about killing the Golden Goose. I believe, like the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, the condition is likely fatal, and during the next phase, “millionaires” and the middle class will be targeted.
After all, the fraud won’t fund itself.
I despair for my home state. The rest of you may laugh…for now.
Our own State Auditor confirms: Newsom has made California the Fraud Capital of America. A scathing report identifies 8 separate state agencies as “high-risk.” This means they exhibit serious “waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement," costing taxpayers billions. pic.twitter.com/Bc7bCrhgIa
— Kevin Kiley (@KevinKileyCA) December 22, 2025
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Comments
“You didn’t build that.”
It’s gonna get worse before it gets worse.
Wouldn’t this be a ex post facto law?
Yes, but they’re calling it a ‘tax’ so as to fool Chief Justice Roberts.
I’m not sure whether that Constitutional law applies to the states.
I’m pretty sure that they figure that they can find Federal District and Circuit Court judges who do not believe that Article I, Section 9 applies to California. At least for long enough to do some world class theft.
Subotai Bahadur
“…when the state asks for a little something back.”
A ‘request’ implies the ability to say “No.”
If somebody ‘asks’ me for a cigarette, I have the ability to decline for whatever reason. I don’t smoke, I only have one cigarette left, I don’t like the color of your hair, whatever. It isn’t a request when the taxman comes, it’s a demand. You try saying “No” to the IRS
something back indicating the State is the source of the money when it is always and only a leach. If well controlled a symbiotic leach but still a leach.
just as a “gun buy back” is really euphemism for “confiscation” … the government can’t buy back something it never owned.
We have to get past these weasle-words that are used to manipulate legitimate discussion.
So what’s to stop them from backdating it to five years ago?
Nothing. They just don’t have The Audacity of Hope at that level.
Not yet, but give them little time and they will develop it.
“A scathing report identifies 8 separate state agencies as ‘high-risk.’ This means they exhibit serious ‘waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement,’ costing taxpayers billions.”
Like most liberal states, California may be bad at auditing welfare benefits, but it’s really good at auditing income taxes!
One earns votes. The other pays to earn those votes.
We spent at least 3 years of the Biden administration in The Emperor’s New Clothes being told to even question Ol’ Joe’s mental competency was stupid and evil.
I keep feeling like we are trying to enter the universe of Atlas Shrugged.
And this is definitely golden egg laying goose territory.
California is not trying to enter the universe of Atlas Shrugged. It’s there already.
Well the certainly are leading the way in not being able to build a railroad.
🎶 “Once I didn’t build a railroad… Brother can you spare a trillion?”
FYI: It is not “The Golden Goose”, but rather “The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg”.
It’s the Goose that used to lay gold eggs.
Correct. The eggs were gold, the goose was a “standard issue” goose, save the eggs.
Other than the nuclear reactor in its crop.
https://novel12.com/asimovs-mysteries/pate-de-foie-gras-993113.htm
The carcass formerly known as “goose”
Elon Musk just referred to “Golden Geese” in this context, so I am simply a trend-setter for updating the reference! https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2010804262419456311
Make Billionaires Millionaires Again.
All the gold in California used to be in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills—before all the Billionaires left.
This proposal is so insidious that I expect more than just billionaire flight from CA. Just take the description – a “one time” tax of “5%” on those with assets “over $1B.” Obviously the 3 key variables in this line can change with the stroke of a pen so that one time becomes recurring, 5% becomes 10% and over $1B becomes over $1M. It is only a matter of time and math.
Perhaps most insidious, for equity holdings, the plan is to tax on “controlling stake” not just ownership. That’s why the Google guys (Brin and Page) are out. Their equity stake is probably worth $100-200B each but they have a combined 51% voting control (via a special class of shares) of Alphabet which means they would be taxed on $2 TRILLION of controlling interest!
Madness.
I have a feeling there’s a significant percentage of California billionaires and companies that in a just world should be forced to to stay California forever.
They were instrumental in making the state like it is. They attended every green award banquet. They made bank while burning the state to the ground. And now they want to jump ship and begin ruining their new adopted state.
“California/the State made them rich.”
Says it all about the vile, stupid and evil neo-communist Dhimmi-crats’ economic attitudes.
Individual achievement, risk-taking, inventiveness and capital expenditure is erased from memory and acknowledgment, while the Dhimmi-crat apparatchiks claim “You didn’t bulld that” and contemptibly give all credit to the State.
Gotta wonder if Jed Clampett is leaving.
He left years ago. Mr Drysdale went out of business after Jed took his money out. Jethro married Mr Drysdale’s secretary, Miss Hathaway, and she left, too. They all moved to Texas and have voted Republican for many years now.
Bravo.
Dearest Leslie, you are our resident “bird flew” expert. There, fixed it.
Greatest demonstration of FAFO in quite a while.
Just like reparations, most of the left never really intended to actually put this in place because they understand how horrible an idea it would be. They just intended to use it to rile up their base.
The problem is that they badly underestimated just how insane their leftist base has gone, and that too many stupid leftist politicians would take it too far.
Now a good amount of billionaires see that the left might actually be stupid enough to try and put this in place.
They don’t need to live in California. They’re freaking billionaires. They can live anywhere they want.
Just like San Franshithole, even the leftists are no longer willing to put up with the nonsense just to live there.
And once they leave, they’re never, EVER coming back.
Californians getting what they voted for. What could be better? Until they feel the socialist pains acutely, they will continue to vote for it.
What could be better? Forcing those who helped destroy the place to stay there
The original post cites a LA Times “complaining about the wealth flight.”
I, like an idiot, went and read the opinion piece.
(That’s a couple of minutes of my life that I will never get back.)
Despite the author trying to make arguments that make no logical sense, what caught my eye was her bio:
The woman who wrote the article is basically someone who says whether they like a movie, TV show, song?
Yeah. There is some deep thinking there.
The fact remains that she is commenting on people who actually make things and create jobs. Her job leaches off of the work of others.
And she has the audacity to tell people they cannot keep the money which they earned?
Laughable.
1. How much tax revenue does the $1 T generate? CA already has a budget deficit. Thus is only going to pile on.
2. If the billionaires leaving sell off their real assets and move everything to another state or foreign entity, how will CA enforce its scheme to tax thr billionaires’ assets retroactively?
the trillions that pour in from other states via mandatory(?) tax money from around the country keeps the socialists in charge
this is why the cost of “eggs” keeps soaring
And don’t believe that CA won’t come after money long departed from the state. Gil Hyatt negotiated contracts for his processor patents with Japanese companies. He then moved to Las Vegas before he started receiving royalties. CA sued, claiming, for example, that he actually still lived there, despite rarely visiting. If I remember correctly, it took most of 20 years to resolve (in his favor), with two trips to the US Supreme Court. The first case, I think, involved their claim that NV residents had to obey CA law and courts, because the CA constitution said so. Nope. NV law is controlling for NV residents with no ties to CA (except for lawsuits by CA for payment of income taxes from out of state residents. Meanwhile, CA sent dozens of agents to NV, digging through his trash, etc,, and the second Supreme Court decision was that CA didn’t have immunity from invasion of privacy litigation, in NV, despite CA law saying that they did have governmental immunity.
If CA will go that far trying to tax at best several hundred million dollars of income, imagine what they will do to collect their asset tax on billions of net worth.
The flip side is that they will be trying to collect this tax from the single demographic most capable, and likely most willing to defend their money in court. Which is why I call this the “Tax Attorney Full Employment Act of 2026”.
States trying to recruit these billionaires should promise not to give California info on their residents wealth and income.
And indeed the birds have flown.
1. One trilllion of assets moved out of state is going to cost California many millions in income taxes each year. It is probably a negative sum game.
2. While many of that one trillion in assets does not earn money, the cars, houses, boats, art, etc. needs to be maintained, protected, and housed. So all the people that got paid doing that will lose their jobs or also move the the states the billlionaires moved to. The George HW Bush luxury tax cost many US boat builders and others who made the “luxury” goods their jobs.