{"id":573418,"date":"2026-07-29T07:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/573418\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T07:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:35:08","slug":"irish-entrepreneur-patrick-collison-donated-7m-to-group-opposing-california-wealth-tax-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/573418\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish entrepreneur Patrick Collison donated $7m to group opposing California wealth tax \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stripe<\/a> co-founder and chief executive Patrick Collison<\/a> has donated $7 million (\u20ac6.2 million) to a political campaign group fighting to block a proposed wealth tax in California, US<\/a> filings show. <\/p>\n

Collison (37) built online payments giant Stripe with his brother John Collison<\/a> and they became billionaires in the process. Documents show Patrick Collison has thrown his financial heft behind an effort to kill off a proposed wealth tax on Californian billionaires. <\/p>\n

The Irish tech entrepreneur is recorded as donating $2 million (\u20ac1.8 million) in January to a political action committee called Building a Better California. He then donated another $5 million (\u20ac4.4 million) in March, filings show. <\/p>\n

Campaign finance paperwork lists Collison as having an address in Redwood City, in California\u2019s Silicon Valley tech hub, where Stripe\u2019s US headquarters are based.<\/p>\n

Building a Better California, set up this year, opposes a proposal that would require Californian residents worth more than $1 billion to pay a one-off, 5 per cent tax on those assets. It is proposed that the money raised from the tax would fund healthcare programmes in the state. <\/p>\n

Voters in California are set to have their say on the idea in November, following a successful push to put the billionaire wealth-tax proposal on the ballot by a healthcare workers\u2019 trade union. <\/p>\n

Several tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have donated millions of dollars to the Building a Better California group, which has supported rival legislative initiatives intended to nullify the wealth-tax push.<\/p>\n

Building a Better California describes its mission as ensuring the US state \u201cremains a centre of innovation, good-paying jobs and economic opportunity\u201d. <\/p>\n

Limerick-born Patrick and John Collison, who grew up in Dromineer, Co Tipperary, moved to San Francisco and founded Stripe in 2010, when they were 21 and 19 respectively. <\/p>\n

The company facilitates online payments and has grown into a Silicon Valley giant, employing more than 8,000 people. Its headquarters are co-located in Dublin and San Francisco. <\/p>\n

The two brothers have become Ireland\u2019s wealthiest individuals, each estimated to be worth $17.5 billion by business media outlet Forbes. <\/p>\n

Stripe did not respond to queries about Patrick Collison\u2019s donations to the group fighting the wealth-tax proposal.<\/p>\n

Separate filings show Sergey Brin, a cofounder of Google, has donated $82 million to Building a Better California this year. <\/p>\n

Eric Schmidt, former chief executive of Google, and Tony Xu, co-founder of US food delivery giant DoorDash, also put millions of dollars behind the group. <\/p>\n

Other donors include Daniel Tierney, who administers a Chicago-based investment firm called Wicklow Capital Inc. He handed over $500,000, filings show. <\/p>\n

Michael Moritz of venture capital giant Sequoia Capital, an early investor in Stripe and Google, is recorded as donating several million dollars to the campaign group as well. <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Stripe became the main sponsor of the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition held in Dublin\u2019s RDS. Patrick Collison, then aged 16, won the competition in 2005. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stripe co-founder and chief executive Patrick Collison has donated $7 million (\u20ac6.2 million) to a political campaign group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,18015,19902],"class_list":["post-573418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-patrick-collison","tag-stripe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}