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.
smells like somebody doesn’t want to pay his fair share
A retroactive tax is pretty bullshit.
It being a one time tax with a “if you lived here 1-1-26” is also idiotic. The billionaires wouldn’t even pay. It’d just be tied up in courts for like the next 20 years.
Not beginning until you hit a billion dollars is also stupid.
It needs to start at a much lower net worth, be every fucking year, not be retroactive to a single date on the calendar that happened before the vote (cause that really is bullshit to do), and be on some sort of increasing percentage instead of just a flat 5.
Pay $45m. Trying to not be taxed…
45 milly to not pay 12 billy seems reasonable.
That’s nothing to them, it’s about the money in the long run.
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
Edit: Was more of a comment on the inconceivable amount of money these fucks must be getting paid for 45 mil to be a drop in the bucket. Please don’t mistake my disgust for their tax amount as a justification for their actions. Imagine how much good that money could do. Instead it sits in the pockets of the top 0.01% while the only money they pay is to other corrupt fucks who keep them from paying more. The whole idea would be laughable for its logic if it wasn’t so damn cruel in action.
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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?
Damn his wig looks bad.
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!
dontbe evilCan we get one good one though? There has to be one good billionaire, somewhere, by sheer statistical folly. Narwhals exit. Bumblebees fly. Now complete the impossible trifecta.
You only become a billionaire by exploiting people. Like a lot of people. You might as well say “there has to be at least one good serial killer”
There aren’t that many billionaires.
I think you have to be evil to become a billionaire. Nobody by themselves contributes something to society that is worth billions. So they are taking more than they contribute and are apparently willing to do so and disadvantage other people. This is evil. That is why there are no good billionaires.
Also, if by some extreme coincidence you become a billionaire by accident and if you are a good person, you would give it away for the benefit of society. So then you would not be a billionaire anymore.
The fact that he’s both willing and able to do this, is the one single biggest argument in favour of abolishing billionaires.
And it’s only a one off… it’s crazy generous. I would advice for a recurrence of some sort.
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.
They’d rather pay to manipulate the tax code than pay taxes.
So would I, but I’d like to pay to make it simpler and route more of it to education / universal healthcare.
If they could pay an accountant $50k to avoid $20k in taxes that’s a win for them
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.
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”
“The $45m he spent to fight this would’ve allowed us to renovate this school. The $12b he’d owe would let us renovate 100 schools. Or get X thousand of the homeless off the streets. Or fixed 10 million potholes.”
Make his name responsible for those things not happening.
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Define corporate profits.
Corporations have incredible amounts of ways to avoid saying they made any money at all, while keeping all the money as if they were profits but technically not.
Just look at Hollywood accounting for an extreme example.
Company A is spun up, “rents” everything from it’s parent, Company B, to make a movie. Movie releases and all the “profit” is marked as loss because Company A still owes Company B an insane amount.
it’s almost like corporations should be required to report all assets every year along with Thier taxable expenditures…
Yeah I just noticed I had replied to the wrong comment
Corporations don’t really pay taxes anymore. In the 50s 90% of taxes came from corporattions and businesses, now 90% is from individuals. They usually pay nothing, and even when they do pay something, they can reach back and unpay it with losses, for 3 years, or reach forward like 10 years to offset losses against tax.
To say nothing of all the tax breaks. They pay next to nothing, often nothing. Sometimes they pay negative taxes.
See my edit since it seems everyone missed what I was going for.
Edit: also, turns out I replied to the wrong comment. My bad
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.
