Silicon Valley titans have been working hard and spending big to defeat California’s proposed wealth tax, but they need to broaden the fight.
According to estimates calculated from public filings, tech godfathers such as Sequoia’s Michael Moritz and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr have spent more than $120 million on efforts to stop the tax, a bill for which recently cleared the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee and now heads toward the deep-blue Assembly and Senate. Per some recent reports, it has a 70% chance of passing.
Fighting the tax, which would impose a 5% levy on billionaires’ net worth, is definitely a worthy cause.
The policy would be suicidal for a state already hemorrhaging residents, businesses, and revenue. Billionaires who have already fled the state in anticipation of the tax have taken an estimated $1 trillion with them. The tech industry would be hit hardest because the tax could force founders with illiquid wealth to sell a portion of their companies just to pay the bill.