I don\u2019t really understand why tax avoidance is the holy grail of the richest American families.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019ve got more than enough money to fund your lavish lifestyle, your family foundation or, say, send your wife on a girls\u2019 trip to outer space<\/a>, why not just happily pay your taxes?<\/p>\n But that\u2019s me being naive.<\/p>\n In this country, I guess, the point of getting rich is to get even richer.<\/p>\n As convicted tax evader and New York real estate mogul Leona Helmsley once so infamously put it<\/a>: \u201cWe don\u2019t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n Years later, Helmsley\u2019s real estate rival Donald Trump channeled the very same sentiment: During a 2016 presidential debate, Trump\u2019s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton accused the Republican nominee of not paying federal taxes. His response?<\/a> \u201cThat makes me smart.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m so over this attitude.<\/p>\n I\u2019m tired of the in-your-face conspicuous consumption <\/a>of couples like Jeff and Lauren Bezos. I\u2019m sickened by the grotesque displays<\/a> of brummagem in the Oval Office, and of the greedy urge to pay for lower taxes on the rich by kicking low-income Americans off Medicaid<\/a> and choking off their healthcare subsidies<\/a>. (And don\u2019t get me started on the cost <\/a>of the ill-conceived war on Iran, which we learned this week is topping $25 billion. So far.)<\/p>\n If we\u2019ve learned anything about Republican tax-cutting mania over the past few decades, it\u2019s that George H.W. Bush was absolutely correct when he described Ronald Reagan\u2019s \u201ctrickle down\u201d theory as \u201cvoodoo economics.\u201d Other critics have aptly dubbed it \u201csupply side snake oil.\u201d<\/p>\n Repeat after me: Tax cuts do not pay for themselves.<\/p>\n Like a lot of left-leaning voters, when I first read about California\u2019s proposed 2026 Billionaire Tax Act <\/a>I was tickled.<\/p>\n Why not? The billionaire families it would affect are benefiting hugely from Trump\u2019s \u201cbig, beautiful\u201d tax cuts. Why not force them to give back a little so people can have healthcare<\/a>?<\/p>\n The initiative, which appears to have gathered enough signatures<\/a> to qualify for California\u2019s November ballot, was crafted by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West to help cover the roughly $30 billion <\/a>the state stands to lose from Trump\u2019s tax-and-spending law. It\u2019s estimated that over five years, the one-time levy would generate about $100 billion, mostly for the state\u2019s faltering healthcare system.<\/p>\n There are obvious drawbacks. For one thing, you can\u2019t impose state taxes on people who don\u2019t live in the state, and over the years, California budgets have come to rely too heavily on the income and capital gains taxes paid by the wealthy, which can fluctuate dramatically.<\/p>\n According to numerous news reports, about a half-dozen of California\u2019s 200-plus billionaires have left the state to avoid paying the proposed tax. They have purchased lavish estates in Nevada, Florida and Texas. And though they are tiny in number, they are so wealthy that they would have paid about $27 billion<\/a>, slightly more than a quarter of the total predicted from the new tax, should it pass.<\/p>\n The chintzy billionaires who have reportedly fled because of the potential tax include Google co-founders Sergey Brin (estimated net worth: $219 billion) and Larry Page ($300 billion), Paypal and Palantir Technologies co-founder Peter Thiel ($27.5 billion), Meta\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg ($200 billion) and Oracle\u2019s Larry Ellison ($225 billion). To be fair, they all have philanthropic foundations and have donated huge sums to their pet charities and research projects.<\/p>\n And yet, it\u2019s really a shame they don\u2019t follow the lead of Nvidia\u2019s Jensen Huang ($150 billion), who recently urged tech CEOs<\/a> to stay. \u201cI say to everybody, \u2018Move to California, don\u2019t leave.\u2019 It\u2019s the highest taxes in the world, but it\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n In January, Huang told Bloomberg that he was \u201cperfectly fine\u201d <\/a>with the proposed tax on billionaires. \u201cI haven\u2019t thought about it even once,\u201d he said. \u201cWe work in Silicon Valley because that\u2019s where the talent pool is. \u2026 We chose to live in Silicon Valley, and whatever taxes they would like to apply, so be it.\u201d<\/p>\n It is true that wealth taxes, while very appealing to those of us who do not own private islands, private jets and yachts, are difficult to administer. And countries that have tried them out have often backpedaled on the policies. But unlike places like France, which imposed a wealth tax and later repealed it,<\/a> this is a one-time deal.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s not forget that in the last few political cycles, tech billionaires have come out of their Silicon Valley garages and become deeply interested in politics, moving ever rightward as they cozy up to the Trump administration.<\/p>\n And they certainly aren\u2019t stupid. California has a long tradition of competing ballot initiatives, and in that spirit, some of the obscenely rich guys \u2014 primarily Brin \u2014 are pushing two initiatives,<\/a> which would either make the billionaire tax illegal or impossible to enforce. Both, under the aegis of the political action committee Building a Better California<\/a>, appear to be on track to qualify for the November ballot.<\/p>\n One can only wonder: a better California for whom?<\/p>\n Bluesky: @rabcarian<\/a>
Threads: @rabcarian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t really understand why tax avoidance is the holy grail of the richest American families. When you\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[126213,7,68863,9,8,7363,65499,1734,10649,126212,61642,2280,225,1747,29860,1519,72],"class_list":["post-297810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-billionaire-family","tag-california","tag-california-billionaire","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-country","tag-healthcare-subsidy","tag-initiative","tag-jensen-huang","tag-little-people","tag-november-ballot","tag-silicon-valley","tag-state","tag-tax","tag-taxis","tag-trump","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297810","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=297810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}