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article <\/p>\n article <\/p>\n
FILE-Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill October 23, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images) <\/p>\n
OAKLAND, Calif. – Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has warned his company that he may flee California if voters choose to adopt a billionaire tax.<\/p>\n
The company said Zuckerberg had been granted a financial incentive to stay in California and continue leading the company for the next eight years, despite the risk of a “significant, multi-billion dollar tax payment.”<\/p>\n
Where the money flows <\/p>\n
By the numbers:<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg\u2019s net worth is estimated to be approximately $240 billion.<\/p>\n
Proposition 40, if passed, would enact a one-time 5% levy on taxpayers and trusts with assets valued at over $1 billion. For Zuckerberg, that would mean paying roughly $12 billion. The taxed funds would go largely toward health care \u2014 90% \u2014 and the rest would be spent on education, food assistance, and administering the wealth tax.<\/p>\n
The tax would apply to an estimated 200 Californians, and is projected to raise roughly $100 billion over five years.<\/p>\n
Meta’s plan <\/p>\n
What they’re saying:<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s plan, as laid out in a regulatory filing<\/a>, is to create a new class of share that would allow Zuckerberg to sell up to half of his economic stake in the company without giving up the voting control granted by owning the controlling share of its stock.<\/p>\n “Zuckerberg informed the Special Committee that he was evaluating relocating his primary residence outside California and that steps toward any such relocation, including any listing of his residential real estate on the market, would be public and inevitably noted and commented upon by Company employees and, accordingly, raise questions for management of the company going forward,” the filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission reads.<\/p>\n Zuckerberg\u2019s continued leadership of the company he founded is “critical” to its success, as Meta continues to invest in AI.<\/p>\n Meta has agreed to gradually lift restrictions on Zuckerberg\u2019s ability to sell certain shares over eight years, on the condition he continues to lead the company and continue to reside near its headquarters.<\/p>\n “The goal is to keep Mr. Zuckerberg continuing to lead the company from California and in close proximity to Meta Superintelligence Labs,” the company\u2019s SEC filing states.<\/p>\n Pros and cons <\/p>\n Local perspective:<\/p>\n Proposition 40 has proven divisive, and has drawn support and opposition from a range of stakeholders.<\/p>\n Senator Bernie Sanders has voiced support for the tax, as have the ACLU of California, the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the California Federation of Teachers.<\/p>\n “From 2019 to 2025, California billionaires\u2019 wealth grew an average of over 15% per year, while they paid, on average, just .26% of their wealth annually in state income taxes,” Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the Paris School of Economics\u00a0said in an interview<\/a>. “Their income tax payments accounted for only 2.4% of California\u2019s income tax revenue.”<\/p>\n The coalition opposing the bill includes Governor Gavin Newsom, gubernatorial candidates Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, the California Republican Party, the San Francisco Democratic Party, the California Police Chiefs Association, the California Teachers Association, and PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, whose net worth is approximately $37 billion.<\/p>\n Newsom has said his opposition to the bill is rooted in the idea that the issue of a wealth tax should be handled on a national level, not by individual states, and that California\u2019s economy will suffer if Zuckerberg and other billionaires flee the state.<\/p>\n “…The fight to make the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes is not one we would be fighting state by state., You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do,” Newsom\u00a0said in a statement<\/a>. “Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes. The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place.”<\/p>\n The Source: Information for this story was gathered from Meta’s SEC filing, as well as Ballotpedia, the New York Times, and Gavin Newsom’s substack.<\/p>\n News<\/a>Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"article FILE-Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,21163,100,592],"class_list":["post-503959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-news","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503959","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=503959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}