TL;DRTech billionaires have poured over $120m into fighting California’s Proposition 40, a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires heading to the November ballot, against $31m raised by union backers. Sergey Brin leads with $82m and has moved assets out of state; Doerr, Moritz, Collison, Schmidt, Larsen, Thiel, and others follow. Donation figures come from campaign filings via Business Insider.
Silicon Valley’s wealthiest are spending heavily to stop California’s proposed billionaire tax, according to a Business Insider tally of campaign filings. Opponents have poured more than $120m into sinking or blunting the measure, roughly four times the $31m raised by its union backers.
Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on residents and trusts worth over $1bn when Californians vote in November. Sponsor SEIU-UHW says the levy on the state’s roughly 200 billionaires would fund healthcare, food assistance, and education, with proponents projecting $100bn in revenue.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin is the opposition’s single largest funder, giving $82m to a committee called Building a Better California. That includes a $16m cheque cut on 15 May, per BI, weeks before the ballot deadline.
Brin, whom Bloomberg’s index reportedly ranks the world’s third-richest person at $280bn, moved a raft of LLCs out of California before a key January deadline. He has compared the tax to Soviet socialism, telling The New York Times he does not want California to “end up in the same place” as the country his family fled.
