California’s biggest union is once again up to no good. Dissatisfied with the piles of cash they’ve already stolen from California high-earning taxpayers, who are subject to a 14.4% income tax rate (the nation’s highest), double digit sales taxes, and the second-highest tax burden in the country, the SEIU is now clamoring for a “one-time” 5% tax on the net worth of “billionaires” to fund health care for illegal immigrants.  Yes, you read that right. Tax the rich even more to pay for ballooning costs of failing, state-run health care. The initiative that voters will likely decide upon in November is the pinnacle of progressive envy. It’s not enough that the top 1% of taxpayers already fund half of the state budget. They’re greedy for more, and the initiative’s new authority to tax net worth is a harbinger of unprecedented government intrusion into our lives. We can first look to the retroactivity clause, which ensures that any taxpayer who did not have the foresight to flee the state by Jan. 1, 2026, will be subject to the tax if voters approve it in November. Progressives are well aware of the millions of people, trillions of dollars, and multiple congressional districts that have already left California for the freer shores of Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and other zero-income tax states. This time around, the victims of their tax hikes won’t have the chance to vote with their feet. The initiative also singles out the most successful entrepreneurs who built their companies from nothing into unimaginable success. For many founders, the tax could be well over 5%. Take Larry Page of Google. He and his co-founder, Sergey Brin, own 11.3% of the parent company, Alphabet. But these shares are not publicly tradable; they are “supervoting” shares that give the founders 52.3% of voting rights on the board.  Under the initiative’s language, it is highly likely they would be taxed on 52.3% of the value of Alphabet ($4 trillion), leaving them with a $200 billion tax bill. That’s nearly half of their net worth, not 5%. Page and Brin would likely have no choice but to convert their supervoting shares to typical Class A, publicly traded stocks just to afford their tax bill, and in doing so relinquish control of the company they single-handedly built, hungry and penniless, in a rented garage. This is the result of deep philosophical corrosion that has infected Sacramento and the Democratic party for decades. The progressives behind this initiative genuinely hate the rich, not for being rich, but for their achievements—for their productivity, for their independence, for building productive companies that change the world for the better—despite the enormous personal and social benefit of products like Instagram or ChatGPT, or the millions of employees whose jobs wouldn’t exist without the single-minded determination of successful founders. But even as Silicon Valley entrepreneurs at the forefront of the AI revolution suffer immediately, the ultimate consequences of this initiative will be felt by the middle class. For the first time in the history of the world, a government entity could gain the authority to peer behind the veil into your net worth—to audit the total value of every asset you own, every bit of your personal property, tangible and intangible, realized and unrealized. Every couch, car, appliance, home, pet, piece of art and renovated bathroom. The dangers of granting such omniscience and power to the tax collector cannot be understated. The United States could force billionaires to liquidate every asset they have, force them into homelessness, and give every penny to the government, and they still couldn’t fund the federal government for more than a single year. The real money—$170 trillion of it—is locked up in the middle class. Once the billionaires are penniless, who do you think the czars of the welfare state will go after next? Be forewarned: the progressive Left is targeting the billionaires—first. Then they’ll come for you. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post California’s ‘Billionaire Tax’ is a Trojan Horse appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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