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.
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.