\u201cIs California\u2019s proposed billionaire tax smart policy? History holds lessons,\u201d<\/a> Jan. 26).<\/p>\nThe proposed tax is being sold as a replacement for the imminent loss of federal Medicaid. Any \u201ctax expert\u201d with common sense is well aware that many \u2014 perhaps a significant majority \u2014 of the targets of the tax will contest it (and aggressively discount their assets in self-assessing their tax) at the administrative (appeals) level and, if not satisfied, will proceed with litigation.<\/p>\n
This process takes years to play out. The state administrative behemoth will be spending enormous amounts of (non-billionaire) taxpayer dollars to collect money that will arrive far into the future and long after the alleged need for imminent spending on any healthcare needs \u2014 if it arrives at all.<\/p>\n
The proponents should know this quite well, indicating that the entire initiative is an asset seizure masquerading as moral virtue.<\/p>\n
Kip Dellinger, Santa Monica
This writer is the former tax policy and practice columnist for Tax Notes magazine.<\/p>\n
..<\/p>\n
To the editor: Rather than imposing a \u201cwealth tax,\u201d wouldn\u2019t it make more sense to just rewrite the tax code so that the loopholes that essentially give multimillionaires and billionaires a free ride were sewn up so that they had to pay their fair share?<\/p>\n
Susan Greenberg, Los Angeles<\/p>\n
..<\/p>\n
To the editor: The backers of the wealth tax bill claimed that they learned from Europe\u2019s experience. But why did the European countries that repealed such wealth taxes repeal them outright instead of learning from what happened and improving on how the taxes were implemented?<\/p>\n
Ming Lai, Frisco, Texas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 28, 2026 6 AM PT To the editor: Having been a tax practitioner now for more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27788,7,9,8,2072,75524,75523,63,75526,7589,75527,75521,75525,75522,8267,18672,72],"class_list":["post-153320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-asset","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-editor","tag-former-tax-policy","tag-kip-dellinger","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-moral-virtue","tag-need","tag-non-billionaire","tag-one-time-wealth-tax","tag-practice-columnist","tag-premise","tag-santa-monica","tag-writer","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}