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california billionaires tax
Billionaire-Backed Groups Launch Ad Blitz Against California Wealth Tax
Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Peter Thiel are among the billionaires bankrolling ads against a proposed one-time tax on the wealthiest Californians.
Aug 25, 2026
Organizations backed by mega-billionaires, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and notorious venture capitalist Peter Thiel, have launched an advertising blitz aimed at convincing California voters to oppose a one-time, 5% wealth tax targeting the very richest people in the state.
The two most prominent groups fighting the tax, which will appear on California's November ballot as Proposition 40, are Building a Better California and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes. The former group, funded in large part by Brin, debuted its first television ad on Tuesday, just the start of what's expected to be a massive propaganda push against the proposed tax.
The New York Times reported that the first ad from Building a Better California "emphasizes that unions representing teachers and firefighters oppose the tax, along with the state’s top politicians, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat."
"The ad makes no mention of the billionaires who vigorously oppose the tax," the Times added.
The coalition spearheading the wealth tax campaign is led by Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW). The tax proposal has won endorsements from the California Federation of Labor Unions, the California Nurses Association, and the California Democratic Party, along with high-profile progressive lawmakers including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW, told the Times that supporters of the tax are "not going to try to compete at all with the billionaires on broadcast television." Brin's group is reportedly set to spend more than $90 million on ballot initiatives this year.
Instead, the Times reported, "the union plans to spread its message through text messages, social media, door-knocking and slate mailers, making the most of the powerful endorsements it recently won from the California Democratic Party and the California Federation of Labor Unions."
Last week, the Thiel-backed group Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes launched an online ad that falsely characterized the proposed billionaire levy as "an everyone tax" and a "Trojan horse."
The ad features a menacing, AI-generated caricature of Sanders and other supporters of the tax, who are shown forcibly seizing residents' property, including a boat, a kid's scooter, and an elderly woman's television set.
1. The billionaires fighting a billionaire tax in California have created an AI-slop ad that shows the tax’s supporters assaulting kids and stealing their stuff. pic.twitter.com/L6PgmfUFAM
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 25, 2026
Journalist Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter, noted that the "fundamental premise of the ad is false."
"It claims that the initiative’s drafters included a provision that allows them to 'turn the tax on you,'" Legum wrote. "The initiative says that the tax can only be amended by the Legislature through a two-thirds vote of both houses. Even then, any changes must be 'consistent with and further... the purposes of the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.'"
"The ad claims that 'every Californian will have to report all their assets to the state tax board,'" Legum observed. "Under the initiative, Californians just have to certify that they do not have $1 billion or more in assets by checking a box. This will be an easy calculation for nearly all Californians."
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Billionaire Google Co-Founder Pumps $102 Million Into Fighting California Wealth Tax
"Sergey Brin would rather spend $100 million to fund a shady opposition campaign than simply pay his fair share in taxes so millions of Californians don’t lose their healthcare."
Aug 16, 2026
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the richest men in the world, has spent more than $100 million backing a group seeking to stop a popular California ballot initiative that would impose a one-time tax on the wealth of the state's billionaires.
New filings reported by The Los Angeles Times detail Brin's role in funding Building a Better California, which is pushing two ballot measures that would undercut and potentially nullify the proposed billionaire wealth tax. Building a Better California is also spending directly against the proposed tax, pumping at least $5 million into "no" efforts.
If passed, revenue from the 5% billionaire wealth tax would be used to offset federal Medicaid cuts and bolster the state's education system. The proposal will be on California's November ballot as Proposition 40, and the two billionaire-backed initiatives are Propositions 41 and 42.
Debru Carthan, the vice president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, said in a statement that "California billionaire Sergey Brin would rather spend $100 million to fund a shady opposition campaign than simply pay his fair share in taxes so millions of Californians don’t lose their healthcare."
"That’s shameful," Carthan added. "Billionaires already pay much lower tax rates than what working families pay out of every paycheck."
The Sergey Brin group Building a Better California is officially opposing the California billionaires tax — donating $5 million to the “No” push to defeat it. pic.twitter.com/GsP2h9ZhXR
— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) August 16, 2026
Proposition 40 has been endorsed by the California Federation of Labor Unions, the California Nurses Association, and the California Democratic Party, as well as prominent progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
But the measure has drawn opposition from powerful forces in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Chamber of Commerce, and the California Teachers Association.
Brin is not the only billionaire financing efforts to defeat the proposed wealth tax in California, which is home to more billionaires than any other US state. Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and venture capitalist Ron Conway have also spent against the ballot initiative.
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have estimated that, between 2019 and 2025, California's billionaires paid on average just 0.26% of their wealth each year in state income taxes.
"For the very richest individuals, the effective burden was even lower. The four wealthiest Californians—Mr. Brin, Mr. Huang, Mr. Page and Mr. Zuckerberg—paid an average of just 0.07% of their wealth annually in California income tax over that period," Saez and Zucman wrote. "This trailblazing wealth tax would be a small (for the ultrawealthy) but important (for everyone else) step toward raising needed tax revenue and curbing the state’s runaway inequality."
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'Vote YES on Prop 40': California Billionaire Tax Opposed by Newsom Gets Ballot Name
“In November, California voters will at last have a chance to make billionaires pay their fair share," said the coalition behind the proposal.
Jul 02, 2026
It's official: The proposed California Billionaire Tax Act, which last week was certified for November's election, has a ballot designation—Proposition 40.
"The people of California now have the opportunity to decide what kind of future they want,” Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) vice president Debru Carthan said on Thursday.
“Proposition 40 asks a simple question: At a time when hospitals are reducing services, working families are being squeezed, and essential services are under attack, should a few hundred billionaires contribute their fair share to protect the state that helped make their extraordinary wealth possible?" Carthan asked. "We believe Californians will answer with a resounding yes."
Drafted by SEIU-UHW, Prop 40 would impose a one-time 5% levy on people worth $1 billion or more, to be paid in annual installments of 1% over five years.
It’s official! The billionaire tax will be on the ballot as Prop 40. This November, Vote YES on Prop 40 to ensure billionaires pay their fair share to keep hospitals and ERs open. #BillionaireTaxNow
[image or embed]
— Billionaire Tax Now (@billionairetaxnow.bsky.social) June 30, 2026 at 1:31 PM
The bil would require the state to spend 90% of revenue from the tax on healthcare and the rest on food assistance and public education. Proponents say the tax would raise roughly $100 billion in revenue. Critics argue that it could drive wealthy residents and investment from California and stall economic growth.
Prop 40 supporters include the Teamsters union and progressive groups like the California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Our Revolution, as well as individual progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Democratic congressional candidate Connie Chan, who is running to replace retiring longtime San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.
The measure is opposed by Republicans, business groups, the Democratic Party, and even some progressives, including Chan's opponent, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11).
Prop 40's most prominent Democratic opponent is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom critics accuse of trying to bamboozle voters with his recently unveiled plan for a national billionaire income tax. Some observers skeptical of the presumed 2028 presidential hopeful contend that his support for an income tax is rooted in knowledge that very rich people actually have relatively little income when compared with their investments and other assets.
Some progressive groups opposing Prop 40—including the California Teachers Association (CTA) and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California—point out that it is a one-off tax on wealth, not income. CTA is backing a separate ballot measure, the Children’s Education and Health Care Protection Act, which would permanently extend Proposition 55, California’s existing high-income-earner tax, which is set to expire in 2030.
In response to Thursday's ballot designation, Billionaire Tax Now said in a statement that "the measure qualified for the ballot after supporters submitted more than 1.6 million signatures from Californians across the state—nearly twice the number required to qualify—making it one of the strongest citizen-led ballot qualification efforts in California history."
"Voters consistently support the billionaire tax by large, double-digit margins," the coalition continued. "For healthcare workers who have dedicated their lives to caring for patients, today’s news isn’t just welcome, it’s critical. With no other viable alternatives proposed by Gov. Newsom, the billionaire tax is the only available option to stop a cascade of hospital and clinic closures spurred by massive federal cuts in HR 1, known as President [Donald] Trump’s so-called 'Big, Beautiful Bill.'"
"In November," Billionaire Tax Now added, "California voters will at last have a chance to make billionaires pay their fair share to help prevent widespread hospital closures, through a commonsense ballot initiative that places a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of approximately 200 billionaires who reside in the Golden State."
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'We Intend to Win': California Billionaire Tax Officially Certified for November Ballot
"The fact that the ultra-wealthy and billionaire-backed politicians like Gov. Newsom nearly succeeded in killing it is the single best argument for why we need to tax billionaires in the first place."
Jun 26, 2026
Organizers said late Thursday that a proposed one-time wealth tax on California billionaires has been certified to appear on state ballots in November, advancing despite efforts by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and billionaire-funded groups to tank the measure ahead of the June 25 deadline.
"Today we’re making it clear that we aren’t backing down–the billionaire tax will be on the ballot this November, and we intend to win,” said Debru Carthan, a radiologic technologist and spokesperson for Billionaire Tax Now, the healthcare union-led coalition leading the ballot initiative.
If approved by California voters, the proposal would tax billionaires' wealth at a rate of 5%, raising an estimated $100 billion to shore up the state's healthcare system amid devastating federal cuts to Medicaid. Revenue from the tax would also be used for food aid and education, according to the initiative's text.
Last week, organizers offered to withdraw their proposal if Newsom agreed to push a 2% tax on billionaire wealth in California's Legislature. Newsom, who is widely seen as a 2028 presidential hopeful, rejected the compromise and privately told a major Democratic donor that he was confident the billionaire tax would not appear on California's ballot in November.
Organizers emphasized Thursday that despite Newsom's opposition and fearmongering from billionaires and other opponents, the proposed tax is popular among California voters, who are facing an affordability crisis as the wealthiest see their fortunes soar. From 2023 to 2025, the wealth of California billionaires surged by 144%, according to a recent paper co-authored by leading economists.
"Voters consistently support the billionaire tax by large, double-digit margins, and the growing campaign has brought on thousands of volunteers," organizers said in a statement. "Supporters of the measure submitted over 1.6 million signatures, more than double the number needed to secure a spot on the general election ballot."
To succeed, proponents of the billionaire tax must secure enough votes to pass their initiative while also defeating separate ballot measures that would effectively cancel out the wealth levy. One of the competing initiatives was pushed by a group bankrolled by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat the billionaire tax and who left California in late 2025 to avoid the potential levy.
The competing ballot measures—the Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act of 2026 and the Improving Transparency, Effectiveness, and Efficiency in California Government Act of 2026—are titled in ways that could lead some voters to support both the wealth tax and proposals that would counteract it.
Igor Volsky, director of the Tax the Greedy Billionaires campaign, said in a statement that "when billionaires can erase democratic initiatives that threaten their fortunes, they have too much power."
"The fact that the ultra-wealthy and billionaire-backed politicians like Gov. Newsom nearly succeeded in killing it is the single best argument for why we need to tax billionaires in the first place," Volsky added.
US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a vocal supporter of the proposed billionaire wealth tax, said Thursday that "this issue couldn’t be more simple."
"There are 250 billionaires in a state of 40 million people," said Khanna. "What we’re saying is, tax these 250 billionaires so that millions of Californians can have healthcare."
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Failing 'Moral Test,' Newsom Rejects Compromise 2% Wealth Tax on California Billionaires
"I want a Democratic party that will stand for the working class," said Rep. Ro Khanna, a supporter of taxing billionaire wealth. "Whose side are you on?"
Jun 19, 2026
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday refused to budge from his opposition to a proposed wealth tax on the Golden State's billionaires, swiftly dismissing a union-led coalition's effort to compromise by reducing its desired 5% rate by more than half.
In a letter to Newsom on Thursday, the Billionaire Tax Now coalition urged the governor and likely 2028 presidential candidate to support a "2% wealth tax on the state’s richest 200 billionaires." The coalition's demand came hours after organizers announced that they had collected enough signatures to get their proposed one-time, 5% tax on billionaire wealth on California's ballot in November.
Newsom's office made clear that the governor, who has been outspoken in his opposition to the proposed 5% wealth tax, would not support the compromise offer.
"The governor has been clear that he is strongly opposed to a California-only wealth tax," Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement. "Changing the tax rate doesn’t change this measure’s fundamental flaws that harm working Californians.”
The Billionaire Tax Now coalition on Thursday offered to withdraw its popular ballot initiative calling for a one-time 5% levy on California billionaires' wealth if Newsom agreed to throw his weight behind legislation enacting a 2% wealth tax instead. Organizers and supporters say a tax on the vast fortunes of the state's wealthiest residents would help avert a looming healthcare disaster spurred by federal Medicaid cuts that President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans passed last summer.
"California is home to more billionaires than any state in the nation," the coalition wrote in its letter to Newsom on Thursday. "Their wealth has grown a staggering 212% in the last six years alone to more than $2.2 trillion dollars. A 2% one-time tax on that accumulated wealth is modest by any objective measure, especially if it means keeping emergency rooms open and saving patient lives. It’s more than appropriate at a moment when every other Californian is being asked by Sacramento to sacrifice."
"We need you to stand up against one of Trump’s worst and deadliest domestic policy blunders yet—the cuts to California healthcare contained in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill,'" the coalition added. "Let’s save patient lives together."
US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a Silicon Valley representative who has supported the proposed wealth tax in the face of angry billionaire backlash, expressed support for the 2% compromise offer in a social media post on Thursday, noting that "250 billionaires own half of California GDP."
"Taxing them at 2% would save healthcare for millions. Healthcare workers have already compromised from 5%," Khanna wrote. "I want a Democratic party that will stand for the working class. This is a moral test for our party. Whose side are you on?"
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'Unlikely Bedfellows': Left-Leaning Groups Join Newsom-Backed Effort to Sink California Billionaire Tax
“This is not going to be, ‘Billionaires killed this wealth tax’ if it appears on the November ballot,” said Newsom's chief of staff. “It’s going to be Planned Parenthood, doctors, teachers, and labor killed it.”
Jun 17, 2026
It comes as no shock that Silicon Valley oligarchs and other plutocrats are trying to keep a proposed billionaire tax backed by California governor and presumptive Democratic presidential aspirant Gavin Newsom off November's ballot. But the participation of progressive groups as "unlikely bedfellows" in the effort to kill the wealth tax has surprised many observers.
Introduced by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), the California Billionaire Tax would impose a one-time 5% levy on people worth $1 billion or more, to be paid in annual installments of 1% over five years. Proponents say the tax would raise roughly $100 billion in revenue.
The proposal requires the state to spend 90% of revenue from the tax on healthcare and the rest on food assistance and public education. Opponents counter it could drive wealthy residents and investment from California.
Supporters of the billionaire tax have submitted more than 1.5 million signatures, far more than the roughly 875,000 valid signatures required to qualify for November's ballot. The signatures are still being verified, and the office of California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has until June 25, 2026 to determine whether the initiative qualifies.
The measure is backed by numerous progressive groups including the Teamsters union, California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and Our Revolution, as well as individual progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Democratic congressional candidate Connie Chan, who is running to replace retiring longtime San Francisco congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.
However, opponents are trying to stop the proposal from qualifying for the ballot, while preparing for a fight in the likely event that it does.
Newsom, the California Democratic Party, and a growing list of groups—including the California Teachers Association (CTA), Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California (PPAC), and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California—are publicly opposing the tax and are urging SEIU-UHW to pull the proposal before June 25.
Republicans, the California Chamber of Commerce, and other capitalist interests oppose the billionaire tax, as do both candidates for California governor, Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, and Chan's opponent in the San Francisco congressional race, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11).
Newsom said that the proposed tax "makes no sense" and would be "really damaging to the state."
CTA argues that the tax is a one-time revenue source, while California schools and healthcare programs need permanent, recurring funding. To that end, the union is backing a separate ballot measure—the Children's Education and Health Care Protection Act—which would permanently extend Proposition 55, California's existing high-income-earner tax, set to expire in 2030.
Jodi Hicks, PPAC's president, recently said that the California Billionaire Tax's "uncertain impacts on the state budget and lack of specificity on healthcare allocations will do more harm than good in the long term."
PPAC and aligned groups including California Medical Association and California Primary Care Association also support extending Prop 55.
Meanwhile, tech billionaires and Silicon Valley executives—including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen—have raised tens of millions of dollars for Building a Better California, a political action committee dedicated to defeating the proposed tax at the ballot box.
Building a Better California is also backing separate initiatives designed to weaken or nullify the billionaire tax, including a ban on retroactive wealth taxation, restrictions on how any new tax revenue can be allocated, and the imposition of new auditing requirements.
Newsom and his allies have a useful weapon to deflect claims that he's helping billionaires who are trying to defeat the proposed tax.
“This is not going to be, ‘Billionaires killed this wealth tax’ if it appears on the November ballot,” Nathan Barankin, Newsom’s chief of staff, told The New York Times Wednesday. “It’s going to be Planned Parenthood, doctors, teachers, and labor killed it.”
SEIU-UHW accused opponents of the proposed tax of “carrying water for a few of the world’s most controversial billionaires."
“Their complicity with billionaires at the expense of patient interests is no surprise,” SEIU-UHW chief of staff Suzanne Jimenez told the Times.
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'Are Readers Meant to Take This Seriously?': Economist Refutes Latest Attack on Wealth Tax by Bezos' Washington Post
"Local hospitals and emergency rooms could shut their doors forever because billionaires insist on paying less than the rest of us," said Emmanuel Saez, the French economist who designed California's wealth tax proposal.
May 07, 2026
The architect of California's wealth tax proposal called out The Washington Post and its multibillionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, on Thursday for peddling what he said is "misinformation" to readers.
Emmanuel Saez, a French economist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was tapped by California's largest union to design the tax proposal, singled out an opinion piece by the Washington Post editorial board from earlier this week that argues the proposal would backfire and cost California billions of dollars in tax revenue each year.
Saez said the article contains glaring falsehoods and omits key information about the proposal, which aims to create a one-time tax of 5% on the total assets of California's roughly 200 billionaire residents in order to recoup about $100 billion in revenue for healthcare, food assistance, and education stripped from the state by last year's Republican federal budget legislation, which will hand $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1% of Americans over the next 10 years.
The piece, published on Monday with the headline "California already losing with billionaire tax referendum," argues that even if California voters don't ultimately approve the measure, "the specter of such a wealth tax has already cost the state more in lost future revenue from income taxes than it would raise" due to an exodus of wealthy people from the state—an oft-used but weakly substantiated talking point by opponents of the measure.
The Post cited a paper by Jared Walczak, a visiting fellow at the California Tax Foundation, which it said demonstrates that billionaire flight "will cost California’s state government somewhere between $3.5 billion and $4.5 billion every year in other tax collections, and up to $19 billion in lost [gross domestic product]."
But Saez argued that his study makes a "basic mistake" by "modeling a mobility response of billionaires to a permanent annual and recurrent 5% wealth tax." In reality, though, the tax would be imposed only once and would apply to any billionaires who resided in the state after January 1, 2026, which has already passed, so it no longer creates an incentive to move.
Saez argued that in any case, "Walczak’s estimation of the California income tax paid by billionaires who have threatened to leave is also wildly exaggerated."
Walczak's figure for lost tax revenue, he said, hinges on the idea that the three richest men who've threatened to leave the state, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, pay $1.7 billion in California income taxes each year.
"If only they paid so much!" Saez quipped.
"In reality, using Securities and Exchange Commission data on stock sales, stock donations, dividends, and executive compensation, we can directly estimate that they paid only [$269 million] in California income tax in 2025, 6.3 times less than Walczak’s assumption," he said, citing a paper he co-wrote in March responding to a similar argument by a conservative think tank.
He cited tax data showing that the tech tycoons—who own a combined $810 billion according to Forbes—only collectively paid about [$22 million] per year on average between 2019-25, with Brin and Page paying no taxes on their wealth from stock in Google's parent company Alphabet during three of those years because they didn't sell stock, get dividends, or receive executive compensation. This is despite 90% of their wealth coming from those holdings.
"The one-time wealth tax finally makes them contribute in proportion to their enormous wealth gains," Saez said.
The Post also claimed that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) United Healthcare Workers West, the union leading the charge in support of the referendum, is "pretend[ing] that the tax is needed to save California’s health system from 'collapse'" and is instead dishonestly using that framing to covertly pursue the "redistribution of wealth."
But Saez said that the federal cuts of roughly $20 billion annually are already having devastating effects on Californians that could be alleviated with more tax revenue.
As a result of the cuts, "more than 400 California hospitals have already laid off more than 3,400 healthcare workers as of mid-March, with a second wave of layoffs expected as funding cuts tied to recent federal policy changes are phased in over the next several years," he said. "Statewide, projections show the cuts could result in the loss of up to 145,000 healthcare jobs, impacting hospitals, clinics, and home care providers alike."
Eighty-three more hospitals in California may be at risk of closing due to the federal funding cuts, according to a recent nationwide analysis by Public Citizen. But Saez said the billionaire's tax would go a long way toward closing the gap.
"Right now, California’s billionaires pay much lower tax rates than what working families pay out of every paycheck," Saez said.
Despite claims otherwise by the Post editorial board—which last month ran another piece arguing that due to progressive taxation, "the rich already pay more than their fair share"—according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, at all levels of government from 2018-20, billionaires paid just 24% of their total income in taxes, while the US-wide average was 30%. This disparity arises largely due to loopholes that allow the rich to avoid taxes on business and investment gains that are not sold.
"Local hospitals and emergency rooms could shut their doors forever because billionaires insist on paying less than the rest of us," Saez said.
Debru Carthan, the executive vice president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, said it was not surprising that the Post "completely ignores that the billionaire tax would keep hospitals from closing and healthcare costs from skyrocketing for millions of Californians" because it is "a crisis that comes as a direct result of the tax breaks handed out to Jeff Bezos and his buddies."
Since the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, the Amazon founder has taken a much heavier hand over the content of his flagship paper, including its opinion section, which he last year mandated to exclusively publish pieces on economics that promote “personal liberties and free markets," leading to the resignation of opinion editor David Shipley.
But Saez marveled at how blatant Bezos' thumb on the scale has appeared in his paper's coverage of California's billionaire wealth tax and similar proposals, which it has denounced on several other occasions.
“Are readers meant to take this seriously?" Saez asked. "‘Board of billionaire-owned paper comes out against tax on billionaires’? Everyone knows this board makes political decisions at the behest of Jeff Bezos, but this one is the most transparent of them all."
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Running for California Governor, Tom Steyer Says Billionaires Like Him ‘Should Pay More Taxes’
"I'm the billionaire who wants to tax people like me more. I'm the billionaire who's willing to stand up to the monopolies and the people who are ripping off Californians."
Apr 22, 2026
In a California gubernatorial race characterized by a lack of clear progressive choices and the specter of an all-Republican general election under the state's so-called "jungle primary," a hedge fund billionaire who believes that plutocrats like himself should pay more taxes is gaining progressive support.
On Tuesday, Farallon Capital founder Tom Steyer was endorsed by Our Revolution, the progressive political action group launched as a continuation of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) kneecapped 2016 presidential campaign.
Our Rev said that Steyer "has stepped forward with a platform that is clearly aligned with the priorities of our movement—single-payer healthcare, taxing extreme wealth, bold climate action, and getting money out of politics."
Steyer was interviewed Tuesday by The Lever's David Sirota, who asked about Our Revolution's support for a plebiscite to "tax billionaires like yourself," and how he squares "being the progressive movement's choice in this race while being one of the people who there's a ballot initiative to tax more."
The California Billionaire Tax would impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on people worth $1 billion or more, to be paid in annual installments of 1% over five years. According to Forbes, Steyer is currently worth $2.4 billion.
"Well, David, I think people like me who are billionaires should pay more taxes," Steyer said.
"I'm the billionaire who wants to tax people like me more," Steyer added. "I'm the billionaire who's willing to stand up to the monopolies and the people who are ripping off Californians. I've done it for 15 years and I'll keep doing it."
That message has been echoed in one of Steyer's campaign ads, in which he asserts that "it's time for billionaires like me and big corporations to buy into the future of California and be willing to pay more."
Steyer continues:
A lot of people in California are acting as if we have a zero-sum game and they're defending their wealth and they're trying to make sure that they minimize their taxes. I am not scared about paying more money. Working Californians are being priced out of this state. It is not okay. We are creating more than enough money in this state for us all to succeed together without anybody suffering... [I] think that everybody who succeeded in this state owes a huge debt to the people who built this state and the working people who make this state run and work their asses off.
"We need to change our tax system," Steyer concludes in the ad. "We need more revenue. We need to be fair and I pledge to do all of those things. This is not rocket science."
In addition to his stance on taxation, Steyer has gained progressive support by funding climate initiatives, opposing the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, and pouring more than $120 million into efforts to impeach President Donald Trump and in support of Proposition 50, the successful state ballot measure to redraw the state's congressional map in retaliation for Trump-backed Republican gerrymandering in Texas. He is also a prolific philanthropist.
On the flip side, the fact that Steyer is a hedge fund billionaire whose heavily self-funded campaign is the opposite of grassroots continues to fuel skepticism among progressives, many of whom view the mere existence of billionaires as an abject public policy failure. Steyer also came under fire over the revelation that his portfolio had been invested in private prison stocks decades ago.
Steyer said during his interview with Sirota that he doesn't agree with the assertion that billionaires are a public policy failure.
"I think that phrase obviously goes back to Karl Marx," he said. "And I believe if someone wants to come to California who has an idea to change the world and forms a company around it and it does really well and as a result they make a lot of money, that's fine with me."
With a dearth of progressives to choose from, more and more left-leaning groups and individuals are throwing their support behind Steyer. These include Courage California, Third Act, the California Teachers Association and other labor groups, and state lawmakers including Assemblymen Ash Kalra (D-25) and Alex Lee (D-24).
Some progressives are reluctantly backing Steyer due to the very real possibility of an all-Republican general election under California's open primary—in which the top two vote-getters advance, regardless of party. The "jungle primary" is set for June 2.
The latest weighted polling shows Trump-backed Fox News host Steve Hilton leading the race with 16% support, followed closely by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco at 14%. Those Republicans are trailed by Steyer (13%) and other Democrats: former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (13%), former Congresswoman Katie Porter (10%), and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan—the top choice of numerous Big Tech billionaires—at 5%.
Erstwhile Democratic frontrunner and now former Congressman Eric Swalwell suspended his race for governor and quit Congress earlier this month amid mounting allegations of rape and other sex crimes that he has denied.
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