{"id":429426,"date":"2026-08-11T03:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T03:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/429426\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T03:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T03:46:10","slug":"google-billionaire-throws-100m-at-battle-over-california-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/429426\/","title":{"rendered":"Google billionaire throws $100M at battle over California tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google co-founder Sergey Brin<\/a>, the world’s fourth-richest man, has now spent more than $100 million to fight the Billionaire Tax and avoid shelling out an estimated $13.3 billion.<\/p>\n

Brin’s net worth is estimated to be around $267 billion. He recently donated another $20 million to Build a Better California, which is an organization that advocated against California’s proposed billionaire tax, according to a recent filing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Sergey<\/p>\n

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, at a dinner at the White House in Washington D.C. on September, 2025. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/p>\n

Google headquarters in New York (pictured). (Christopher Sadowski) Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n

Prop 40<\/a>, known as California’s billionaire tax, would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of around 200 billionaires that live in the state.<\/p>\n

The funding from the proposed tax would be expected to go to California’s healthcare programs.<\/p>\n

Governor Gavin Newsom has come out saying he’s against the tax and instead in favor of a “national billionaires’ tax<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

“Today, the office worker can shoulder a higher tax rate than the heiress,” Newsom said on Substack. “We should end the ‘tax-free lifestyle loan,’ the gimmick that lets the ultra-wealthy borrow against their stock portfolios while reporting no taxable income.”<\/p>\n

Prop 40 is on California’s ballot in November.<\/p>\n

But it’s expected to have competition with other initiatives that could render it moot.<\/p>\n

One of the competing measures that made it to the ballot would “require audits of programs funded by new state special taxes”, the California Secretary of State announced in June.<\/p>\n

It was the first to qualify of the multiple ballot proposals backed by Building A Better California.<\/p>\n

This comes as Trump’s budget cuts are expected to take shape next year. The state’s Medicaid program alone is expected to lose up to\u00a0$30 billion<\/a>\u00a0in federal funding.<\/p>\n

Several others are also looking to avoid the tax. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly bought a\u00a0$170 million mansion<\/a>\u00a0near Miami this year. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Google co-founder Larry Page have also left the state.<\/p>\n

Others like Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s co-founder, have said they’re “perfectly fine<\/a>” paying the billionaire tax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the world’s fourth-richest man, has now spent more than $100 million to fight the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,13216,170858,457,14624,36511,98422],"class_list":["post-429426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-secretary-of-state","tag-christopher-sadowski","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-google","tag-sergey-brin","tag-tax-rate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429426","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=429426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}