A Google founder has more than doubled his financial contribution to the fight against a proposed wealth tax in California. New filings with the state show that former Alphabet president Sergey Brin donated $25m to a Super Pac dedicated to blocking the tax on top of $20m he had already given.
Brin is not alone among Google’s top brass in upping his financial stake in the campaign against the ballot proposal. The company’s former CEO Eric Schmidt donated $1.02m, adding to a previous $2m contribution.
The tech titans are battling the California Billionaire Tax act, often referred to simply as the billionaire tax. It’s a proposed ballot measure that would require any California resident worth more than $1bn to pay a one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state. It’s sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, and is still in the signature-gathering phase.
If the measure reaches the ballot and gains voters’ approval, the tax would apply to billionaires based on their residency as of 1 January 2026. For Brin, worth about $247bn, the bill would likely be upwards of $12bn. That stipulation appears to have caused him and several other billionaires to leave California at the end of last year. Brin relocated to a $42m estate on the north-eastern shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada, and his Pac donations show Reno as his address. Schmidt’s filings show his address as West Hollywood.
Pay $45m. Trying to not be taxed…
tbf, it’s staple of the grifter kickback scheme. money is bullshit, in the higher circles you basically just move your $ pile around inbetween a group of trusted like-minded individuals to minimize tax burden.
Imagine how ridiculous the taxes have to be for $45M to be preferable
*
ridiculousproportionateWhen you have an unfathomable amount of money, your taxes look pretty wild whatever they are.
Ridiculous? I consider it my civic duty to pay tax. I’m happy paying tax. I just with that those with the broadest shoulders would pay the same % as I do.
Does anybody need to be worth $247B? Is a fucking sickness is what it is. I literally can’t fathom it. I’m 42 give me £500k right now and I quit work and just go enjoy what’s left of my life.
You think these people don’t have enough money?
And it’s only a one off… it’s crazy generous. I would advice for a recurrence of some sort.
Billionaires should not be allowed to exist, period!!
Imagine being so rich that, not only could you drop $45M without even thinking about it, and not only could you just move to a new $42M house without thinking about it, but you would still be worth $235 BILLION after losing 12 billion dollars… and being angry!
The fact that he’s both willing and able to do this, is the one single biggest argument in favour of abolishing billionaires.
Citizens United ruined America.
1,000,000%.
Is this a proposal for how much billionaires should be taxed? Because if so, I’m on board.
Most billionaires are so anti-tax they would spend their entire fortune to keep from paying taxes.
Because it’s not about the money as much as it is the principle of having to follow the same rules as everyone else.
My aunt and uncle bought a Tesla a few years back. Partially for the electric vehicle; partially for the fact that in California up until last summer, if you were driving an EV, you could use the carpool lane even if you were by yourself.
I remember my cousin just complaining complaining complaining that she’d have to use the other lanes like “everyone else” when she went to school, and that she’d have to wake up twenty minutes earlier to compensate for the traffic.
Now that’s class solidarity!
The fact that he can afford to do that is the best possible case in favor of that tax.
Clearly has the money. If he doesn’t like it maybe he should move to texas like the other greedy chuds who hate the state they live in.
Dude is worth a quarter of a trillion
He can afford to spend 12.5bn on stopping this before he’s losing money
Frankly I’d be campaigning on this if I was an advocating politician of the bill. “He is willing to burn this money rather than pay a fair share into public finances to benefit everyone”
He has already left the state to avoid the tax according to the article. So he’ll pay nothing even if it passes. I suspect he’s funding the measure simply because he doesn’t want this to start some sort of nationwide precedent.
This tax is stupid IMO, it shouldn’t be one time, but 1% every year.
I’ll take the 5% though, better than nothing.Once upon a time this guy would have paid 94% in federal taxes. The math would have literally worked against him … he could pay workers more and give them benefits to lose his money or just lost the money in taxes.
This style tax scale is what got one guy elected FOUR TIMES as President of the US.Yup, the first so much of his earnings would have been lower rates, after the amount surpasses thresholds, the rate increases on that part, reaching 90 some percent on obscene amounts.
They don’t take wages now though, they get like stock options, then borrow against their stock holdings, borrowing more to pay off the old, never realizing a gain to pay taxes. As per Propublica’s reporting.
Yea, the tax free loan loophole needs to be closed as well. So do the cancerous growth causing tax exemptions that make them spend every dime purchasing other companies.
I am unfamiliar with this one, at least in the abstract, I know they can write off losses, depreciation, but for acquisitions too?
That is horrible tax policy. We are being strangled by price fixing from every angle already.
Yes, by the tax code buying another company is an investment. Sometimes they even get tax credits for doing it.
I have heard a few people talk sanely about the tax and the more I hear the more ridiculous this one time “fee” sounds.
I heard a far better proposal about closing the tax loopholes they use. Wealthy folks are borrowing tax free against unrealized capital gains. They pay little to no tax on it.
It’s not sexy but it’s a way better solution because not only does it tax the people who need to be taxed, it also begins to help people push back against capital being more powerful than labour.
It’s also far less costly to implement. You borrow against unrealized capital gains to live as if it were income - boom income tax.
Better once than not at all. It doesn’t preclude better solutions in the future.
That’s probably the only real valid reason to go against it.
Not because it is unfair. But because there’s no teeth to it by making it non-recurring.
there are no good billionaire. the whole concept of billionaire is utterly antisocial
It’s also anti democratic. Giving a few people that much power, is 100% against democratic principles.
It is however perfectly in line with an oligarchy dictatorship.Swifties would disagree.
Who gives a fuck what they think?
Millions of fans of mediocre pop music?
So?
if he didn’t waste his money on politics, he wouldn’t have to worry about the taxes 🤪
Except politics is an investment that pays for itself many times over. For them. Not for us, we are just suckers when we do it.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
