Are California voters about to impose ‘world’s first’ tax on billionaires?

Few places on the planet have as many ultra-wealthy residents as California, a US state known for glamour, coastal mega-mansions, and being home to the rich and famous.

Now voters are about to decide whether the mega-rich among them – including media mogul Oprah Winfrey, Meta head Mark Zuckerberg, Skims cofounder and reality television star Kim Kardashian, and filmmaker George Lucas – should hand over billions of dollars to pay for improvements to healthcare.

Proposition 40 aims to levy a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of all of California’s billionaires.

There are a little more than 200 such individuals in the state – but that hasn’t stopped the measure from dividing leaders and causing some of its ultra-wealthy residents to flee. One billionaire businessman says he’s brought jobs to California, but the proposition made him feel “a little bit like I wasn’t wanted”.

But the vote is also offering regular residents a voice on an issue that has roiled politics for decades.

“I believe this is the first billionaire tax – meaning a wealth tax that is targeting a very extreme percentile of the wealth distribution,” says Francesco Trebbi, a public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He noted the measure’s historic nature and how it could help even out California’s wealth gap.

The state has the largest economy in the country and boasts the fourth-largest global economy, bigger than India and the UK. It is also home to one of the highest concentrations of billionaires in the world. But it also has the largest share of homeless people in the nation and one of the highest wealth gaps.

Supporters of the measure argue it helps ensure the ultra-wealthy contribute their fair share and will help backfill gaps in the state’s budget. The move aims to raise $100bn (£75bn) to make up for federal funding cuts to the state’s health-care system.

Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff for Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which helped lead the initiative, says the measure is a “short-term solution” to massive federal funding cuts coming to California as a result of US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill.

“If we do nothing, we’re going to see a collapse of our healthcare system, while we figure out a longer-term solution to fund our healthcare,” she tells the BBC.

While the ballot measure has many supporters, including billionaires like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, it has faced fierce opposition from a range of figures, from billionaires to the state’s liberal governor.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated more than $100m to a political organisation that funds ballot measures that could block the wealth tax, the Los Angeles Times reports.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose tenure is coming to an end, is perhaps the most notable political leader opposing it. He has voiced concerns that the measure could drive the wealthy out of the state and cut off crucial income tax revenue.

A September poll from the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times found the proposition has not clearly won over a majority of voters, with 45% of likely voters in favour of the tax, 42% opposed and 13% undecided.

The statewide ballot measure would need a majority of residents to approve it.

California is not the first place to toy with the idea of taxing the rich. Also on the West Coast, voters in the US state of Washington are considering whether to accept or reject a “millionaires tax” – a 9.9% tax on income over $1m a year.

While wealth taxes were once a fairly common form of taxation in Europe, they have rapidly fallen out of favour and now exist in only three European countries, Spain, Norway and Switzerland, says Dr Kristian Niemietz, head of political economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Niemietz believes wealth taxes are “more trouble than they are worth” because they create administrative burdens, suppress investment, drive capital flight and, in the end, raise little revenue.

In Norway, a local news organisation found that a wealth tax increase led more super-wealthy people to leave the country in 2022 than in the preceding 13 years combined. A study on Switzerland found that a 0.1 percentage point increase in a wealth tax reduced taxable wealth by 3.5%.