Wealth tax backers tout 1.5M signatures. Billionaire-backed rival gathers steam
Backers of a controversial proposal to charge a one-time tax on billionaires’ wealth have gathered more than 1.5 million signatures. It’s more than enough to appear on this November’s ballot, they said at a news conference Monday.
Under the proposal led by SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, billionaires would pay a tax of around 5% of their wealth, with 90% of the revenue going toward healthcare needs caused by federal budget cuts.
The same day, supporters of a competing ballot measure that would effectively undermine the billionaire tax said they, too, had submitted enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
That measure would require extensive audits of any program that receives funding from new or higher state taxes. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, a billionaire who reportedly moved to Nevada last year to skirt the wealth tax, has spent $57 million so far on a group called Building a Better California, the main funder behind the so-called Transparency Act.
Healthcare workers and union leaders featured at Monday’s news conference painted a dire picture of the fallout from the Republican megabill signed by President Donald Trump last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill. Without the tax, they warned millions would lose insurance and patient care would deteriorate.
“Hospitals are closing and people will die,” said Liz Perlman, executive director at AFSCME Local 3299. “Why? So billionaires can get another tax cut that they don’t need. It’s immoral and needlessly cruel, and this measure does one thing: it rights that wrong.”
Rob Lapsley is the president of the California Business Roundtable, which is behind one effort to defeat the wealth tax. He said it imperils the state’s economy and fails to address California’s budget deficit.
“In fact, because the state relies so heavily on high-income-earner tax revenue, this measure could lead to reduced budget revenue in the long term as highly mobile, wealthy individuals leave the state to avoid this new tax,” Lapsley said.
The financial impacts of the wealth tax are a topic of fierce debate among tax experts. Supporters claim it will generate a $100 billion windfall and skeptics echo Lapsley’s predictions.
The Transparency Act’s supporters have avoided publicly connecting it to the billionaire tax. Instead, they bill the measure as a piece of good governance supported by “a coalition of good government groups, small businesses, community advocates, accountants and auditing experts.”
But the measure’s biggest financer is Brin, who reportedly confronted outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom about the tax at a Christmas party last year, according to Bloomberg and The New York Times. Forbes estimates Brin’s net worth at nearly $265 billion, making him the fourth-wealthiest person in the world.
Newsom has come out against the tax, as have most of the candidates running to succeed him.
County registrars will now validate signatures from both ballot measures and report the results to Secretary of State Shirley Weber, whose office will ultimately rubber-stamp the proposals to appear on voters’ ballots.
This story was originally published April 27, 2026 at 2:25 PM.
