New ballot initiative would levy a 5% tax on California’s 200 billionaires

PAY UP, ZUCK

California’s powerful health care union SEIU United Healthcare Workers West is throwing its weight behind a new 2026 ballot initiative called the Billionaire Tax Act, intended to buoy the state’s Medicaid system, Medi-Cal, amid federal cuts.

If approved by voters, a 5% tax would be levied on California’s roughly 200 billionaires, including tech giants like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison and Sergey Brin. Nine out of 10 dollars would go to Medi-Cal, with the rest going to public K-12 schools.

“This will help us keep health care facilities open. It will stabilize premiums and coverage for all Californians, protect health care jobs and also improve public education,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW, during a Thursday news conference.

House Resolution 1, passed by Congress on July 4, impacts the health care system in several ways: lowering reimbursement rates for hospitals and providers, increasing barriers to get on the program, and adding payments enrollees must make, according to the nonprofit California Health Care Foundation. The group said the cuts would result in $100 billion less for Medi-Cal over the next five years.

As for how the tax would work?

It would be a one-time tax on the billionaires’ net worth, payable over the course of five years. To do the math, for every billion dollars a person has, $50 million would go to California’s coffers. For perspective, Forbes estimates Zuckerberg’s net worth to be about $250 billion.

To prevent the group from evading the tax, it would be levied on billionaires who lived in California in 2025 and the beginning of 2026.

“Even though it’s a lot of revenue, the 5% tax rate is actually modest relative to the rate of growth of billionaire wealth,” said UC Berkeley Economic Professor Emmanuel Saez. His colleague, Professor Robert Reich, also appeared during the news conference, lending his star power to the effort. Reich is a former secretary of labor.

Regan said SEIU-UHW is prepared to put the money behind getting the 874,000 signatures necessary to get the proposal onto the ballot by June 2026.

“This really is necessary. It really is an emergency.”

Read more about the proposal from The Bee’s economic mobility reporter, Cathie Anderson.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“We are not going to ever fix the issue of the homelessness that we have if we don’t address the real issue. It’s not homeless, it’s drug- and alcohol-induced psychosis.”

— Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, during a 2026 Governor Candidate Forum at the California Economic Summit in Stockton

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