Florida is a great state, only the best, I encourage ALL of the Tech Billionaire Elites to move there and bless that state with their influence, presence, and political pressure.
100%! We have an obligation, nay, a duty to let all the billionaires know how much happier they’d be in Florida, on Mars, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, literally anywhere else!
Tax the assets too. Just cuz it’s hard doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
We have the most expensive military in the world. We can fund anything if we want.
But also we could fix this by having them go to jail for life or something if they mess up on their taxes. They’re rich enough that making a mistake shouldn’t be a thing. Hire two tax guys or three or whatever. Then the govt goes in with all the ppl to make certain that’s real.
If they’re found to have offshore stuff, also jail.
That’s a pretty huge oversimplification of the problems of taxing unrealized gains on the stuff people own
Much more than a one or two man job and opens the door for tons of litigation that becomes more costly than the net effects
Land is pretty cut and dry when assessed, and the system encourages efficient usage that benefits the direct area rather than disincentivizes idle land in high value areas (cities) and also discourages land speculation / rent seeking in general
No litigation. You have the government say what something is and how much you owe then. But only for over a certain amount of wealth.
Sorry, society is letting you have billions, you don’t get to say what’s taxed what or sue about it. You’re mad then don’t come back and be in another country. Also you can’t do business here and you’re sanctioned.
you're literally proposing an authoritarian regime where the govt can just come and take what it wants and you have no recourse. slippery slope. we have the constitution for a reason.
They don’t hold cash. Their wealth is mainly equity, ie company shares, both private and public, which is illiquid, and that’s what the state is going after and want to tax that.
Sure they can. But if the state’s tax system requires taxpayers to borrow against assets to pay taxes, that’s a sign the tax base is poorly designed. Taxes are supposed to be paid from income or realized gains, not leverage. You are literally taxing paper wealth that might or might not exist.
The existing system is the flawed one. Buy Borrow Die is a tax loophole that needs to be closed, and avoiding selling their company shares is part of their tax avoidance strategy. Forcing them to convert that to cash, enough to pay taxes at least, isn't a bad thing.
You’re mixing up two different things. RSUs are taxed when they vest because that’s a realization event. Shares are delivered, income is recognized, and taxes are withheld by selling some of the stock. That’s largely applied to tech workers that are not in the billionaire class.
That’s completely different from taxing unrealized equity where no vesting, no sale, and no income event has occurred. Thats what the investors / billionaires usually hold.
....that's not what it is. Billionaires have stock options that they'll have to exercise to acquire (which would trigger a tax event). However unlike tech workers where they sell most of their vested RSU every quarter, billionaires hold on to them for a number of years.
Then if they choose not to sell those stocks, then there would be no realized gain, therefore no capital gains tax. But company stocks by themselves owned by billionaires are VERY liquid.
Options are a path to ownership of the stock, not the wealth itself. That’s why it’s called the paper wealth. You are promised with a contract to buy the shares at a low and often rock bottom price but you have to exercise it first, then you actually own the shares (wealth).
You’re describing how options become shares, not how wealth should be taxed afterward. Exercising options is a realization choice. Holding shares without selling generates no cash and no locked-in gain.
And Liquidity isn’t binary thing either. Large concentrated equity positions can’t be sold freely without restrictions, disclosures, or price impact - SEC and the board of the company usually would question it.
That’s why tax systems are built around realization.
RSUs, options, and founder equity are different instruments with different tax logic. Conflating them into the same thing doesn’t justify taxing unrealized gains.
The old saying in the valley has always been: “all options eventually goes to zero.” (because these startup usually will fail and the options could be worthless). It’s a bit crazy to tax the assumed paper wealth.
....stock option has a pre-determined expiration date. People can't just hold stock options without exercising it indefinitely. When stock options are exercised, that becomes a taxable event. Once that tax is paid (either AMT or ordinary income tax), then it becomes owned stocks.
This is what you (and I) are talking about, where the stocks are owned, but not sold. Billionaires who holds tons of stocks tend not to sell them, thus able to generate incredible wealth (either through appreciation or dividend). And the issue here is that unlike normal people who generate income through W-2, billionaires are able to just borrow against their share holdings to "generate" income, thus evade paying income taxes altogether. Hence, the billionaires pay substantially less taxes as a % of their income. I personally pay significantly more taxes as a % of income than billionaires like Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos and even Donald fucking Trump, and that isn't fair.
And they absolutely can sell them to cover their tax liabilities, just as plenty of workers who get a portion of their compensation through stock options do. They just can't sell a massive chunk of it at once (even though Musk has openly admitted to doing it).
It’s a bit crazy to tax the assumed paper wealth.
Odd, because we already do that for property taxes.
I don’t think stock options and real estate should be treated the same.
Stocks and options are liquid, volatile, and not magically untaxed. ISOs and NSOs are taxed at exercise through AMT, and any additional gains are taxed again as capital gains when the shares are sold. (This has happened to me personally as a tech employee facing a large tax bill (AMT) years before the company I worked for eventually went IPO - we already kinda tax regular people in paper wealth in reality…)
Property OTOH, is illiquid, slowly valued, and has no forced realization, which is why property taxes exist.
So unlike real estate, stock options already have a built-in realization event.
Billionaires are not even 1% of the population, they are 0.00001% more likely (making up a number but you get the idea). If a few leave that will make the budget deficit even bigger, which means less money to invest in education.
Saying that he’s not going to be a billionaire isn’t an insult, it’s a fact. I’m not going to be a billionaire, you’re not going to be a billionaire, none of us are going to be billionaires.
Whether I become a billionaire is irrelevant. The argument is about who pays taxes today, not hypothetical future billionaires. Dodging the point doesn’t refute it.
Fun fact: most of these billionaires didn’t set out to get rich. Wealth is a side effect of their business ventures became a success.
The people that want to “get rich” quick usually don’t.
Interesting how he forgets that California created the environment for these billionaires to amass their wealth, but want to bail when they made their wealth.
Debunked... Recently? Thanks for providing evidence. Who are you? Joe Rogan?
Also I find it interesting that another account arguing against me is using the same terms. Makes me think I'm arguing against the same person on multiple accounts.
Also funny that you say 2% but then that equates a person with $1,000,000,000 and $750,000,000,000.
The top 2% of billionaires account for over 40% of billionaire wealth.
I don't accept you're claim. I accept the reporting of propublica.
This tax is going to miss Thiel and the ultra billionaires that pay attention.
What I can imagine happening though is some overhyped, unicorn founders getting !@#$!. Imagine:
Some AI company founder ignores his lawyers and remains in California.
Founder has a $1 billion paper wealth Jan 1 based upon AI bubble valuation and latest financing round of his company.
Hence $50 million tax bill gets locked in from "billionaire" tax
Unlike the big billionaires, this founder's billionaire status is only on paper.
Everyone realizes this dude has got to DUMP shares of this overvalued company to pay tax bill.
Price of his shares collapse because everyone knows he's FORCED to sell.
Founders stake turns out to be worth less than $50 million at firesale prices. He sells his whole stake to pay the tax bill, losing both his wealth and control of company.
Some surprisingly large tax hit like this could easily occur to someone? Something related to this scenario happened to the Kistner estate in Sweden.
A famous case was the estate of Sally Kistner, widow of the founder of the pharmaceutical company Astra. The estate was worth SEK300 million (US$36 million in today’s exchange rate) when she died in 1984. The majority of her fortune was tied up in Astra-shares and the value of the shareholding was appraised at the market value on the date Kistner died. The stock market, however, realized that the heirs would have to sell a large portion of the shareholding in order to pay the inheritance tax and that the sale would adversely affect the value of remaining shares. The share price sank and, combined with the capital gains tax, the previously determined inheritance tax exceeded the value of the total assets of the estate. The estate was declared insolvent.
How much tax does thiel even pay? Most of his earnings come from his 5 billion dollar tax-free Roth IRA, which he uses to finance entire companies. The rest of his money is hidden so deep in shell companies that it doesn’t trace back to him.
For the thiel supporters out there, can you point to any publicly available document that shows he’s paid a single cent to California?
Ohio used to be the richest state. Connecticut used to the richest. New York too.
Us deliberately ceding our competitive advantages to other states and even countries now, it's the sort of thing the that feels good in the moment, like quitting a job or whatever, but that leaves us in the same spot. Income goes to someone else.
Why would we choose to do this to ourselves to support crazy budget deficits?
State GDPs are mostly dictated by their relative populations. Look at the list of states by GDP and by population and you will see a very close correlation. The only discrepancies come from states that are grouped closely by population. Their GDP rankings can fluctuate.
Every billionaire could leave and California wouldn't notice any negative effect. As a matter of fact, it might help spark new growth and new innovation. California isn't wealthy because of the rich people who live here. It's the various infrastructures it has created that tend to generate wealth, like education.
Add to this that Peter Thiel may be able to move away from California, he absolutely cannot "leave" California.....he NEEDS California. So his companies will still have offices here and still do business here and still contribute income into the state.
So spare us this sob story that we need to coddle and spoil our wealthy residents just so we can have nice things. It's actually the opposite. We can't have nice things because we have too many damn rich people. As a matter of fact, it would be better if we did a purge of the wealthy every 10 years.
California has so much natural beauty, people will always want to live here even if it costs more money. And when was Ohio the richest state? During the Industrial Revolution? New York is still the 3rd wealthiest state despite being much smaller than Texas which is 2nd.
You seen the New York trend? Or ours? Like, you think that this happens mechanically? No, it's about people choosing to employ people in our state. If California goes full blown 'we don't want you here' it's a pretty tough thing to believe that they wouldn't just move to business eaters across the other states.
Again, you may like this idea, that there are fewer people paying taxes, so that California has to go into a debt spiral, or decline like Ohio or the entire rust belt did. That could be your political ideology, induce failure to strike our opportunity, socialism. Failure begets further failure, as the Europeans have emphatically shown us. Kill your economies in pointless war, and then keep those military economies for decades.
But nobody sensible wants that for our country. And would fucking suck if we did that to our state.
Florida is not set up for tech fabrication. The only southern state that is, Tennessee, is a former civil war battlefield staffed by the children of civil war veterans. Florida is hot, humid and floods all the time - bad place for a huge factory dependent on extremely pure chemical distillation and microscopic circuit assembly. Florida's current population is split between people who didn't graduate highschool and escaped yankees who didn't take tech jobs back home in NY. Florida is a big wet sloppy Las Vegas and Las Vegas's manufacturing itself is unfavorably expensive vs any other mountain zone city.
The VC bros should go back to their spawn point in NYC. Or maybe their ancestral home south of Syria that I'm not allowed to say on reddit.
Shit, I've never heard a better endorsement for taxation in my entire life. We could light the money on fire and it would still be the best thing we do.
These people suck and we need to raise capital gains taxes and introduce new capital gains tax brackets, but taxing unrealized gains is dumb. This will cause self inflicted wounds
Federal estate taxes are 40% which is higher than the top income tax bracket of 37%. They’re already higher. The exclusion for an individual estate is $15M for 2026, meaning any estate below that fair market value doesn’t pay any taxes. Since $15M is a blip for a billionaire, they’re already taxed plenty on inheritance.
Hardly anybody pay estate taxes in real life because of loopholes. In 2021 the Gov collected $20B which is a joke. One of the proposed solutions is to eliminate it and just consider it regular income for the heirs. (With some exclusions so it doesn't affect small estates). The top income tax bracket needs to increase too so that's easy to fix.
Hardly anybody pays estate taxes because most people don’t have more than $15M in their estate.
What loopholes do billionaires use to not pay estate taxes?
I know what married couples with up to $30M use and I know how you can use your Roth IRA for leverage to boost money tax free, but I don’t know how you could do that before you become a billionaire, so I’m curious.
There are a lot of complex schemes. I suggest you search for Ray Madoff. Here is a quote:
"The way to do it is, first of all - and perhaps surprisingly - we need to get rid of the current estate tax. People justify the lack of income tax on investments, inheritances, on the assumption that we have a robust estate tax, but we no longer do. And that's because since 1990, there has not been a single provision adopted to close a loophole in the estate tax. And the effect of it is that the tax exists in name only, providing cover for the rich and not any burden."
In summary, there is so much corruption that billionaires now pay very little in taxes, even after they die. In comparison a middle class worker pays income and payroll taxes all their lives with few loopholes.
And? Most of these billionaire tech cunts don't even live in California full time, they literally spend 6 months and a day in another state so they technically have a different home state for taxation.
It’s not going to happen. It would be economic suicide. SF is still reeling from Prop C. Actions like this would be a hammer blow and they know it. Not stupid enough.
Wait, the same guy who got blood infusions from young folks to stay young longer? The same one who actually named Greta fucking Thunberg as the literal Christian antichrist? The same sketchy anti-democracy goat-turd whose name anagrams to The Reptile?
I’m always confused by the comments on these billionaire tax threads. The whole argument for the bill is that California needs their tax dollars, but then people immediately turn around and say, “good, let them leave!”
It’s that more billionaires are statistically shown to stay — despite the taxes — than leave. So losing the worst of them, like Theil, is then just a nice icing on the cake.
In other words, we’d still be doing better whether he leaves or not, and frankly most of us would be happy to see him somewhere else, so it’s all roses.
It’s also just a rebuttal, generally, to assholes like him saying they don’t actually need California. It’s like someone threatening to break up with you, but you were already thinking of seeing other people anyway.
If I had a billion dollars--basically more money than i could possibly spend in a lifetime--then the location would become more important than my tax rate.
He's already not paying taxes. He's a wealth hoarder. If he throws a tantrum and leaves to Florida for 183 days of the year, he's still going to be hoarding the same amount of wealth and paying the same zero in taxes.
Self-directed IRAs. Smart. By the way, this tool is available to everyone, not just the rich.
You also missed the part of the article where it said he paid taxes on 678 million dollars of income and that he paid taxes on taking out 254 million of his early Roth IRA withdraws.
The trap is better. Since I do not have $100B I should not weigh in on tax policy of the united states. Excellent argument, consider me shut down and you should expect your medal for the order of billionaires in the mail soon! /s
You have it mixed up. We don’t NEED billionaires. Billionaires need us. They cannot operate without us and cannot even become billionaires without the systems we have put in place to make that possible for them.
There is a reason why there aren’t my billionaires being created in South Dakota and it’s because of the liberal and progressive leaning policies that drive economic growth and prosperity.
I know everyone likes bashing billionaires, but this is a bad policy any way you cut it. The people who are going to be hurt most by this are not the billionaires, but everyone else. Everyone’s saying “oh, they said they were going to leave a dozen times in the past, but didn’t”. Well, this is different. What you’re taking from them is not 5% of their wealth, they have more money than they could ever imagine spending. They experience those kinds of losses from regular market fluctuations. What you’re taking away from them is their control of companies. They will leave and that means they won’t be paying income taxes in CA anymore. Nor will people come here to form companies with the hopes of striking it big.
But also consider that forcing them to sell shares is going to meaningfully impact the market. Again, their lifestyle isn’t going to change because they were never going to spend that money (ie consume goods and services). But what you do do is push stock prices down, which hurts anyone with a 401(k) or a pension or who’s trying to save up for a house or for their kids’ college.
I don’t have any problem making billionaires pay much more in tax, there are just many more ways to do so that won’t have such adverse side effects.
Actually, it doesn't matter if the billionaires leave. They are not their assets. Peter Thiel can go wherever he wants and it's not going to affect anything.
It's his businesses. Not him.
His assets. He owns businesses that exist here in CA. If he wants to move them, fine. The employees won't move with them (They've tried that before...multiple times. It doesn't work) and you can't replace the CA highly educated with local talent from Miami. Because the talent you need doesn't exist in Miami, can't be raised in Miami, and won't move to Miami.
Well you see, here on reddit, emotional gratification matters the most. Not facts. If the facts aren't emotionally satisfying, they shall be disregarded.
It's hard to have sympathy when Zucc buys his culty megaplex in Palo Alto or Mayer demolishes her neighbor's house for a pool and the rest of us are stuck in traffic on 101.
For those who don’t know, California law states that any investments generated/acquired while in California will be taxed by California even if the entity is no longer living in California.
So he can leave to avoid the billionaire tax, but he’s still going to be subject to soooooo many California taxes regardless of where he goes. Which… likely means he won’t really leave, cuz those asshats never really follow through with these sorts of threats.
Let's clean out ALL the billionaires from CA and be amazed that our state is just fine. Then we'll tax the living shit out of new mansion purchases and private plane landing fees
I don't think people understand why wealth taxes don't work.
People wealthy enough to be hit by wealth taxes don't really live in one place. They are global already. They have multiple homes in multiple places.
Leaving the state has little meaning to them and is very easy for them to do. This is global issue and until there are global wealth taxes (or global taxation agreements like there loosely are with corporate taxes) then any jurisdiction that tries them will lose out to the ones that don't. This isn't a hypothesis - it is a fact that many different jurisdictions have already tried and lost out on.
This type of wealth tax might make people feel better, but it won't raise much money for California.
Lol people here think rich people leaving is good and won't do it. Many companies already relocated their hq out of California lol. Expect more to happen. And taxes and cost will be passed down to the normal people to maintain budget.
Look how amazing Singapore is ran and look how shitty San Francisco and the rest of the us is. Singapore doesn't have random billionaire taxes. They have an intelligent tax structure and funding mechanism that allows their citizens to have high quality health care, 90% home ownership rate. They don't have capital gain taxes or inheritance taxes, and cap their corporate taxes. So how have they managed to keep attracting rich people to their tiny little city state and afford quality public services for everyone? You should think about that before cheering on billionaire taxes lol.
Us keeps electing horrible leaders like Trump, Mamdani, Breed, based on a popularity contest instead of actual leadership skills. We will never get a Lee Kwan Yew, an actual nation builder. 99% of Americans don't even know how that is lol.
Singapore notably enforces restrictions on migration of low skill labor. I think on balance that ends up benefiting their social nets, labor market, and efficient use of tax revenue. America is too far down the wrong road though. We’ve absorbed heavy, heavy numbers of unskilled migrants leading to significant population segments that are generations out from being self-supporting. That’s not to mention our pre-existing underclasses
The crazy (funny?) thing to me is that there is a very small chance this bill gets any real traction, its basically all social media noise right now. Its a silly bill with no support from the governor, Id be highly surprised if anything like the current idea passes.
There is zero basis in this article that this office opening has anything to do with the tax, its just pure speculation
holy shit based !!
Florida is a great state, only the best, I encourage ALL of the Tech Billionaire Elites to move there and bless that state with their influence, presence, and political pressure.
The tech bros already tried this during Covid. Failed once, will fail again. Because it’s a state filled with crocodiles and airheads.
They also tried with Austin which has largely been a failure (but exploded the Austin housing market)
exactly. going from California’s mediterranean climate to the tropical humidity in Florida is enough to send you back
I think thiel already killed his bf there. The bf “fell off a roof.” So he likes it there.
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100%! We have an obligation, nay, a duty to let all the billionaires know how much happier they’d be in Florida, on Mars, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, literally anywhere else!
Tax their local assets and make them sell anything they're invested in. Don't live here don't earn here
Taxing assets is a mess. Tax the land. They either pay it or actual Californians can use it.
Good ol’ Georgism 🫡
Transforming Monopoly! (originally The Landlord’s Game) into a game you win be achieving a monopoly was the most capitalist thing ever
It isn't that hard.
You can't sit here and say California is amazing yet we can't figure out how to do something Texas and even Missouri have been doing for decades.
Tax the assets too. Just cuz it’s hard doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
We have the most expensive military in the world. We can fund anything if we want.
But also we could fix this by having them go to jail for life or something if they mess up on their taxes. They’re rich enough that making a mistake shouldn’t be a thing. Hire two tax guys or three or whatever. Then the govt goes in with all the ppl to make certain that’s real.
If they’re found to have offshore stuff, also jail.
That’s a pretty huge oversimplification of the problems of taxing unrealized gains on the stuff people own
Much more than a one or two man job and opens the door for tons of litigation that becomes more costly than the net effects
Land is pretty cut and dry when assessed, and the system encourages efficient usage that benefits the direct area rather than disincentivizes idle land in high value areas (cities) and also discourages land speculation / rent seeking in general
No litigation. You have the government say what something is and how much you owe then. But only for over a certain amount of wealth.
Sorry, society is letting you have billions, you don’t get to say what’s taxed what or sue about it. You’re mad then don’t come back and be in another country. Also you can’t do business here and you’re sanctioned.
you're literally proposing an authoritarian regime where the govt can just come and take what it wants and you have no recourse. slippery slope. we have the constitution for a reason.
Oh no! The billionaires are gonna have it too bad! We need to protect them!
You can have up to a billion. After that the government gets very authoritarian.
Rather that way than how it is for poors.
We’re already arguably at authoritarianism with trumps rule. At least it’d be against the rich.
Its income tax not assets tax
You should read the article:
Yes like Seattle and it worked for two years and now their revenues are way below projected $500M because the rich will and do move.
Force them out and then you will have to relocate to find a job dummy
Because they are the job creators? Lucky founders only gum up the system. What innovations has this guy been responsible for recently?
In the current environment many professionals are already being forced to create their own jobs anyway.
Oh yeah. The same city where his boy toy mysteriously committed suicide
Ok bye! 👋
Terrible take
Majority of taxes are paid by top 1% which is 50 % of tax collection. Even if they don't pay wealth tax they pay most.
Goverment didn't made california richest state . Private and public equity did.
And yet the top 1% holds 31% of overall household wealth. Yes, they are paying more taxes, but they also make much more.
By the way, you don’t think government investment into education (like UCLA / Berkeley) didn’t make CA a rich state? lol
They don’t hold cash. Their wealth is mainly equity, ie company shares, both private and public, which is illiquid, and that’s what the state is going after and want to tax that.
Can't they pay with the very liquid SBLOCs they get to avoid taxes?
Sure they can. But if the state’s tax system requires taxpayers to borrow against assets to pay taxes, that’s a sign the tax base is poorly designed. Taxes are supposed to be paid from income or realized gains, not leverage. You are literally taxing paper wealth that might or might not exist.
The existing system is the flawed one. Buy Borrow Die is a tax loophole that needs to be closed, and avoiding selling their company shares is part of their tax avoidance strategy. Forcing them to convert that to cash, enough to pay taxes at least, isn't a bad thing.
Company shares are illiquid? Gee, I wonder how people pay for their taxes on their RSUs then…
You’re mixing up two different things. RSUs are taxed when they vest because that’s a realization event. Shares are delivered, income is recognized, and taxes are withheld by selling some of the stock. That’s largely applied to tech workers that are not in the billionaire class.
That’s completely different from taxing unrealized equity where no vesting, no sale, and no income event has occurred. Thats what the investors / billionaires usually hold.
Edit: typo
....that's not what it is. Billionaires have stock options that they'll have to exercise to acquire (which would trigger a tax event). However unlike tech workers where they sell most of their vested RSU every quarter, billionaires hold on to them for a number of years.
Then if they choose not to sell those stocks, then there would be no realized gain, therefore no capital gains tax. But company stocks by themselves owned by billionaires are VERY liquid.
Options are a path to ownership of the stock, not the wealth itself. That’s why it’s called the paper wealth. You are promised with a contract to buy the shares at a low and often rock bottom price but you have to exercise it first, then you actually own the shares (wealth).
You’re describing how options become shares, not how wealth should be taxed afterward. Exercising options is a realization choice. Holding shares without selling generates no cash and no locked-in gain.
And Liquidity isn’t binary thing either. Large concentrated equity positions can’t be sold freely without restrictions, disclosures, or price impact - SEC and the board of the company usually would question it.
That’s why tax systems are built around realization.
RSUs, options, and founder equity are different instruments with different tax logic. Conflating them into the same thing doesn’t justify taxing unrealized gains.
The old saying in the valley has always been: “all options eventually goes to zero.” (because these startup usually will fail and the options could be worthless). It’s a bit crazy to tax the assumed paper wealth.
....stock option has a pre-determined expiration date. People can't just hold stock options without exercising it indefinitely. When stock options are exercised, that becomes a taxable event. Once that tax is paid (either AMT or ordinary income tax), then it becomes owned stocks.
This is what you (and I) are talking about, where the stocks are owned, but not sold. Billionaires who holds tons of stocks tend not to sell them, thus able to generate incredible wealth (either through appreciation or dividend). And the issue here is that unlike normal people who generate income through W-2, billionaires are able to just borrow against their share holdings to "generate" income, thus evade paying income taxes altogether. Hence, the billionaires pay substantially less taxes as a % of their income. I personally pay significantly more taxes as a % of income than billionaires like Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos and even Donald fucking Trump, and that isn't fair.
And they absolutely can sell them to cover their tax liabilities, just as plenty of workers who get a portion of their compensation through stock options do. They just can't sell a massive chunk of it at once (even though Musk has openly admitted to doing it).
Odd, because we already do that for property taxes.
I don’t think stock options and real estate should be treated the same.
Stocks and options are liquid, volatile, and not magically untaxed. ISOs and NSOs are taxed at exercise through AMT, and any additional gains are taxed again as capital gains when the shares are sold. (This has happened to me personally as a tech employee facing a large tax bill (AMT) years before the company I worked for eventually went IPO - we already kinda tax regular people in paper wealth in reality…)
Property OTOH, is illiquid, slowly valued, and has no forced realization, which is why property taxes exist.
So unlike real estate, stock options already have a built-in realization event.
Billionaires are not even 1% of the population, they are 0.00001% more likely (making up a number but you get the idea). If a few leave that will make the budget deficit even bigger, which means less money to invest in education.
Bold of you to assume they actually pay that much taxes to begin with...
In fact, they pay less tax as a % of their income compared to ordinary households.
You’re never going to be a billionaire.
I work for the government, if California gets less revenue due to rich people leaving, that could mean layoffs.
So? The existence of them is inevitable anyway
I gotta jump in: personal insults usually show someone doesn’t have a counterpoint. Want to try again with an actual argument?
Saying that he’s not going to be a billionaire isn’t an insult, it’s a fact. I’m not going to be a billionaire, you’re not going to be a billionaire, none of us are going to be billionaires.
I feel attacked
Whether I become a billionaire is irrelevant. The argument is about who pays taxes today, not hypothetical future billionaires. Dodging the point doesn’t refute it.
Fun fact: most of these billionaires didn’t set out to get rich. Wealth is a side effect of their business ventures became a success.
The people that want to “get rich” quick usually don’t.
Please delete your profile and never post again.
Stop crying!
No one, literally no one. Here comes this dude Nancy Reaganing the boot 🥾
😂😂😂 what a muppet.
Drink that Oligarch kool-aid. Drink it good.
Show. This guy has several shelter places for his $$$$$’s, this move means little.
I think this is the best answer
Interesting how he forgets that California created the environment for these billionaires to amass their wealth, but want to bail when they made their wealth.
And his funds will continue to invest in Bay Area companies regardless, lol. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out Peter
But the tax revenue from him on his profits and shares would be zero, instead of $a-lot
That might not be the outcome our naive wealth-tax fans want. A reduction in tax paid.
You have no idea how taxes work for the wealthy.
He's not buying and selling - paying ordinary income taxes.
A significant amount of his wealth is in his IRA, Thats all tax free.
Money he needs to buy elections is loaned with his holdings as collateral.
This is a main issue with taxes related to the wealthy.
We should not allow loans against equities.
It's fine by me. If they can borrow at 2% but their holdings grow at 10%. Go for it. Just tax the wealth.
Look up the origins of the income tax. Meant for the wealthy and is now levied on everyone.
We shouldn’t dip societies toes in the water.
You're worried that we'll have wealth to be taxed? LoL . The bank owns most of my house and the gas is worth more than my car.
All the while i have an pretty large medical deductible.
You are probably pretty young.
If you avoid terrible decisions and work hard, chances are you will have wealth that you don’t want redistributed.
LoL you must be pretty old and were taught that the civil war was just about states rights
lol are you saying I’m a democrat from the 1800s?
I do know how it works, and he does sell shares.
The borrowing against collateral thing has been debunked recently. Less than 2% of billionaires use schemes like that
Debunked... Recently? Thanks for providing evidence. Who are you? Joe Rogan?
Also I find it interesting that another account arguing against me is using the same terms. Makes me think I'm arguing against the same person on multiple accounts.
Also funny that you say 2% but then that equates a person with $1,000,000,000 and $750,000,000,000.
The top 2% of billionaires account for over 40% of billionaire wealth.
I don't accept you're claim. I accept the reporting of propublica.
this clown dodges all the state/federal taxes anyways. he doesn’t bring anything positive to CA
Explain how he dodges all taxes. Buy/borrow/die was recently shown to be used by less than 2% of billionaires.
What magic sauce is he using?
Shhhh don’t tell the morons on this thread who think it’s a win.
Bye
Later betch no one will miss you gtfo and don’t ever set your foot here.
Lots of sugar babies for a loaded gay sugar daddy in Miami. But be mindful of staying away from the balcony tho lol
I think he’s keeping his heart open for JD Vance ;)
Taxes are guillotine insurance. I highly recommend it for all billionaires.
The one good thing to come from Trump is California distancing itself from Peter Thiel - and even better, Peter’s doing it too!
This tax is going to miss Thiel and the ultra billionaires that pay attention.
What I can imagine happening though is some overhyped, unicorn founders getting !@#$!. Imagine:
Some surprisingly large tax hit like this could easily occur to someone? Something related to this scenario happened to the Kistner estate in Sweden.
You don’t have to dump shares if you get a loan to pay the tax, using the shares as collateral.
So... massively leverage debt on unrealized gains that could crater at any time?
You'd have to be a complete idiot to try that
Sounds like we would be less likely to have outlandish speculative valuations?
Great!
You want the state to have less tax revenue?
How much tax does thiel even pay? Most of his earnings come from his 5 billion dollar tax-free Roth IRA, which he uses to finance entire companies. The rest of his money is hidden so deep in shell companies that it doesn’t trace back to him.
For the thiel supporters out there, can you point to any publicly available document that shows he’s paid a single cent to California?
We’ll be fine
Ohio used to be the richest state. Connecticut used to the richest. New York too.
Us deliberately ceding our competitive advantages to other states and even countries now, it's the sort of thing the that feels good in the moment, like quitting a job or whatever, but that leaves us in the same spot. Income goes to someone else.
Why would we choose to do this to ourselves to support crazy budget deficits?
State GDPs are mostly dictated by their relative populations. Look at the list of states by GDP and by population and you will see a very close correlation. The only discrepancies come from states that are grouped closely by population. Their GDP rankings can fluctuate.
Every billionaire could leave and California wouldn't notice any negative effect. As a matter of fact, it might help spark new growth and new innovation. California isn't wealthy because of the rich people who live here. It's the various infrastructures it has created that tend to generate wealth, like education.
Add to this that Peter Thiel may be able to move away from California, he absolutely cannot "leave" California.....he NEEDS California. So his companies will still have offices here and still do business here and still contribute income into the state.
So spare us this sob story that we need to coddle and spoil our wealthy residents just so we can have nice things. It's actually the opposite. We can't have nice things because we have too many damn rich people. As a matter of fact, it would be better if we did a purge of the wealthy every 10 years.
California would go bankrupt if every billionaire leaves the state, that's why Gavin Newsom is scared shitless.
No it wouldn't. Gavin's campaign coffers would.
California has so much natural beauty, people will always want to live here even if it costs more money. And when was Ohio the richest state? During the Industrial Revolution? New York is still the 3rd wealthiest state despite being much smaller than Texas which is 2nd.
You seen the New York trend? Or ours? Like, you think that this happens mechanically? No, it's about people choosing to employ people in our state. If California goes full blown 'we don't want you here' it's a pretty tough thing to believe that they wouldn't just move to business eaters across the other states.
Again, you may like this idea, that there are fewer people paying taxes, so that California has to go into a debt spiral, or decline like Ohio or the entire rust belt did. That could be your political ideology, induce failure to strike our opportunity, socialism. Failure begets further failure, as the Europeans have emphatically shown us. Kill your economies in pointless war, and then keep those military economies for decades.
But nobody sensible wants that for our country. And would fucking suck if we did that to our state.
hahahahahahahahahahaah
We’re not. We are projected to have an 18 billion $ deficit this fiscal year. There’s a reason why they proposed this tax in the first place.
Majority of taxes are paid by top 1% which is 50 % of tax collection. Even if they don't pay wealth tax they pay most.
Goverment didn't made california richest state . Private and public equity did.
The poor people that depend on all the rich to fund their services won't be.
I remember a few years ago 2021-22 VC bros were trying to make Miami into a tech hub so hard but everybody came back to SF.
Because no smart person wants to live in Miami.
I know. I lived there for a year before I came here. I hated it. Insufferable city.
Florida is not set up for tech fabrication. The only southern state that is, Tennessee, is a former civil war battlefield staffed by the children of civil war veterans. Florida is hot, humid and floods all the time - bad place for a huge factory dependent on extremely pure chemical distillation and microscopic circuit assembly. Florida's current population is split between people who didn't graduate highschool and escaped yankees who didn't take tech jobs back home in NY. Florida is a big wet sloppy Las Vegas and Las Vegas's manufacturing itself is unfavorably expensive vs any other mountain zone city.
The VC bros should go back to their spawn point in NYC. Or maybe their ancestral home south of Syria that I'm not allowed to say on reddit.
You’re allowed to say Israel, but it sounds like you mean that pejoratively so that’s on you.
Sounds like he’s trying to say “jews”. Holy shit.
You can just say Jews. Nazis are in power again, you won't get in trouble.
Shit, I've never heard a better endorsement for taxation in my entire life. We could light the money on fire and it would still be the best thing we do.
I am absolutely fine with California being the place that creates Billionaires but can’t keep them.
These people suck and we need to raise capital gains taxes and introduce new capital gains tax brackets, but taxing unrealized gains is dumb. This will cause self inflicted wounds
And tax inheritance as regular income and close all loopholes. Problem solved.
Federal estate taxes are 40% which is higher than the top income tax bracket of 37%. They’re already higher. The exclusion for an individual estate is $15M for 2026, meaning any estate below that fair market value doesn’t pay any taxes. Since $15M is a blip for a billionaire, they’re already taxed plenty on inheritance.
Hardly anybody pay estate taxes in real life because of loopholes. In 2021 the Gov collected $20B which is a joke. One of the proposed solutions is to eliminate it and just consider it regular income for the heirs. (With some exclusions so it doesn't affect small estates). The top income tax bracket needs to increase too so that's easy to fix.
Hardly anybody pays estate taxes because most people don’t have more than $15M in their estate.
What loopholes do billionaires use to not pay estate taxes?
I know what married couples with up to $30M use and I know how you can use your Roth IRA for leverage to boost money tax free, but I don’t know how you could do that before you become a billionaire, so I’m curious.
There are a lot of complex schemes. I suggest you search for Ray Madoff. Here is a quote:
"The way to do it is, first of all - and perhaps surprisingly - we need to get rid of the current estate tax. People justify the lack of income tax on investments, inheritances, on the assumption that we have a robust estate tax, but we no longer do. And that's because since 1990, there has not been a single provision adopted to close a loophole in the estate tax. And the effect of it is that the tax exists in name only, providing cover for the rich and not any burden."
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/america-tax-billionaires
In summary, there is so much corruption that billionaires now pay very little in taxes, even after they die. In comparison a middle class worker pays income and payroll taxes all their lives with few loopholes.
Should be higher, sad that this is popular. Will hurt all of us substantially.
And stay out!
FYI the first implementation of DODGE style city management. https://floridapolitics.com/archives/762094-chaos-and-corruption-miami-candidates-react-to-florida-doge-analysis-of-city-spending/
Like a Dodge Charger?
Good, send all the tech to Miami.
And? Most of these billionaire tech cunts don't even live in California full time, they literally spend 6 months and a day in another state so they technically have a different home state for taxation.
Hopefully the rising tide carries him out to sea
You think the conservative GOP knows he’s gay? Wonder what they think about his marriage to another man. Hope they don’t go biblical on him.
The treasury chief is gay person.
You must mean Democrats. Obama and Clinton were against gay marriage.
Florida is so hot and humid that it’s hard to think clearly there
We’ve been so lucky to have the billionaires here in California. Perhaps it’s time we share them with other states.
It’s not going to happen. It would be economic suicide. SF is still reeling from Prop C. Actions like this would be a hammer blow and they know it. Not stupid enough.
Wait, the same guy who got blood infusions from young folks to stay young longer? The same one who actually named Greta fucking Thunberg as the literal Christian antichrist? The same sketchy anti-democracy goat-turd whose name anagrams to The Reptile?
No way. Can’t be the same guy.
Bye Felicia
Tax the drug users too, we want them to leave asap!
Good luck finding talent in Florida! Oh, and please don’t come back.
I’m always confused by the comments on these billionaire tax threads. The whole argument for the bill is that California needs their tax dollars, but then people immediately turn around and say, “good, let them leave!”
Which is it?
It’s that more billionaires are statistically shown to stay — despite the taxes — than leave. So losing the worst of them, like Theil, is then just a nice icing on the cake.
In other words, we’d still be doing better whether he leaves or not, and frankly most of us would be happy to see him somewhere else, so it’s all roses.
It’s also just a rebuttal, generally, to assholes like him saying they don’t actually need California. It’s like someone threatening to break up with you, but you were already thinking of seeing other people anyway.
Appreciate your honest response
If I had a billion dollars--basically more money than i could possibly spend in a lifetime--then the location would become more important than my tax rate.
Is there data to back this up?
IMO, yes?
https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/millionaire-migration-california-impact-top-tax-rates.pdf
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26349/w26349.pdf
https://www.sco.ca.gov/Files-EO/Spotlight/Taxes_and_Migration.pdf
https://www.ppic.org/publication/are-company-headquarters-leaving-california/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/state-taxes-millionaire-myth/678049/
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-tax-california-wealthy-20190311-story.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-06/california-mints-millionaires-faster-than-they-can-leave
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/09/leaving-california-exodus-evidence-myth
And a recent example from NYC:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/08/new-york-city-wealthy-mamdani-win
I'm fine with either one. These are terrible people who operate their companies with no ethics. Pay up or GTFO.
Peter Thiel pays almost 0 taxes. We NEED him to pay taxes, but if you have a multi-billion dollar Roth IRA you don’t pay a dime.
Right, but if he leaves he pays 0 taxes, so why would we cheer on him leaving?
Cause he's a scumbag and it's good he's gone? The win-win situation is pretty obvious here.
He's already not paying taxes. He's a wealth hoarder. If he throws a tantrum and leaves to Florida for 183 days of the year, he's still going to be hoarding the same amount of wealth and paying the same zero in taxes.
How do you know he doesn’t pay taxes?
https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank
Here you go bro.
Sorry you never heard about internet searches. You didn't even attempt to Bing it.
Self-directed IRAs. Smart. By the way, this tool is available to everyone, not just the rich.
You also missed the part of the article where it said he paid taxes on 678 million dollars of income and that he paid taxes on taking out 254 million of his early Roth IRA withdraws.
So no, he is not paying zero taxes.
Ah. You win the internet. You claim we are saying he pays no taxes and then if he pays even 1¢ on a billion $ in taxes - we're wrong.
A perfect trap!
Anyone reading this isn't going to be fooled by you.
So how much in taxes have you “contributed” compared to him?
The trap is better. Since I do not have $100B I should not weigh in on tax policy of the united states. Excellent argument, consider me shut down and you should expect your medal for the order of billionaires in the mail soon! /s
You have no idea what his returns look like
LoL, yes we do. The Panama papers showed us how people in his position pay taxes.
Also there are articles on him because his tax returns were leaked.
https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank
You have no idea what you're talking about. Your such a moron. You couldn't even google it!
Brother this was completely debunked as. A journalist not understanding basic tax policy.
Just post his actual tax return from the last few years, any. We will sort this out. Go ahead
LoL. Sore loser.
It was not debunked, you're just a loser that is sore.
Also the article was written by three journalist and is customary to be vetted many times over. So "A journalist..." What a boob.
Your post on the other hand barely gets spell checked.
First thing you did entering into 2026 was show what a sore loser you are.
Moving the goal post is also a symptom of loseritis.
So… no tax return huh? 😂 a lot of words to say “yeah I don’t actually have this”
You have it mixed up. We don’t NEED billionaires. Billionaires need us. They cannot operate without us and cannot even become billionaires without the systems we have put in place to make that possible for them.
There is a reason why there aren’t my billionaires being created in South Dakota and it’s because of the liberal and progressive leaning policies that drive economic growth and prosperity.
Since they don’t pay much, they can leave instead of leaching off the state.
GFTO asap!
I take it rents in Hell are pretty rough at the moment?
Doesn’t come with any perks anymore.
Bye, Felicia.
Majority of taxes are paid by top 1% which is 50 % of tax collection. Even if they don't pay wealth tax they pay most.
Goverment didn't made california richest state . Private and public equity did.
Workers did. Our hard, underpaid work.
They pay 50% of tax because they're way the fuck overpaid because they looted all the capital.
lol, are they still trying to make Miami happen ?
I know everyone likes bashing billionaires, but this is a bad policy any way you cut it. The people who are going to be hurt most by this are not the billionaires, but everyone else. Everyone’s saying “oh, they said they were going to leave a dozen times in the past, but didn’t”. Well, this is different. What you’re taking from them is not 5% of their wealth, they have more money than they could ever imagine spending. They experience those kinds of losses from regular market fluctuations. What you’re taking away from them is their control of companies. They will leave and that means they won’t be paying income taxes in CA anymore. Nor will people come here to form companies with the hopes of striking it big.
But also consider that forcing them to sell shares is going to meaningfully impact the market. Again, their lifestyle isn’t going to change because they were never going to spend that money (ie consume goods and services). But what you do do is push stock prices down, which hurts anyone with a 401(k) or a pension or who’s trying to save up for a house or for their kids’ college.
I don’t have any problem making billionaires pay much more in tax, there are just many more ways to do so that won’t have such adverse side effects.
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Actually, it doesn't matter if the billionaires leave. They are not their assets. Peter Thiel can go wherever he wants and it's not going to affect anything.
It's his businesses. Not him.
His assets. He owns businesses that exist here in CA. If he wants to move them, fine. The employees won't move with them (They've tried that before...multiple times. It doesn't work) and you can't replace the CA highly educated with local talent from Miami. Because the talent you need doesn't exist in Miami, can't be raised in Miami, and won't move to Miami.
Well you see, here on reddit, emotional gratification matters the most. Not facts. If the facts aren't emotionally satisfying, they shall be disregarded.
You get it.
Do billionaires think they make good neighbors? Please gtf out of California and NYC. Your tax dodging and resource sucking will not be missed.
It's hard to have sympathy when Zucc buys his culty megaplex in Palo Alto or Mayer demolishes her neighbor's house for a pool and the rest of us are stuck in traffic on 101.
Their greed knows no bounds
Adios!
Majority of taxes are paid by top 1% which is 50 % of tax collection. Even if they don't pay wealth tax they pay most.
Goverment didn't made california richest state . Private and public equity did.
Peter Thiel is an evil shit who pushed that garbage JD Vance and works on stealing your privacy.
For those who don’t know, California law states that any investments generated/acquired while in California will be taxed by California even if the entity is no longer living in California.
So he can leave to avoid the billionaire tax, but he’s still going to be subject to soooooo many California taxes regardless of where he goes. Which… likely means he won’t really leave, cuz those asshats never really follow through with these sorts of threats.
Oh no ...... Nobody cares. Tax them to hell
I hope they tax you more, we already have the freaking highest tax in the nation and yet you guys are advocating for more!! Chicken for kfc
Let the door hit you on the way out.
Let's clean out ALL the billionaires from CA and be amazed that our state is just fine. Then we'll tax the living shit out of new mansion purchases and private plane landing fees
Smooth brain take
Good - he can trigger a run on their banks instead.
A tax that raises funds to offset cuts to federal government services and convinces fascists to leave? Yes and yes!
I can tell your cognition isn't so sharp, is it now?
I don't think people understand why wealth taxes don't work.
People wealthy enough to be hit by wealth taxes don't really live in one place. They are global already. They have multiple homes in multiple places.
Leaving the state has little meaning to them and is very easy for them to do. This is global issue and until there are global wealth taxes (or global taxation agreements like there loosely are with corporate taxes) then any jurisdiction that tries them will lose out to the ones that don't. This isn't a hypothesis - it is a fact that many different jurisdictions have already tried and lost out on.
This type of wealth tax might make people feel better, but it won't raise much money for California.
oh no!!!! don’t leave peter thiel! what will we do when peter thiel leaves california!!! oh nooooo
And nothing of value was lost!
Lol people here think rich people leaving is good and won't do it. Many companies already relocated their hq out of California lol. Expect more to happen. And taxes and cost will be passed down to the normal people to maintain budget.
Look how amazing Singapore is ran and look how shitty San Francisco and the rest of the us is. Singapore doesn't have random billionaire taxes. They have an intelligent tax structure and funding mechanism that allows their citizens to have high quality health care, 90% home ownership rate. They don't have capital gain taxes or inheritance taxes, and cap their corporate taxes. So how have they managed to keep attracting rich people to their tiny little city state and afford quality public services for everyone? You should think about that before cheering on billionaire taxes lol.
Us keeps electing horrible leaders like Trump, Mamdani, Breed, based on a popularity contest instead of actual leadership skills. We will never get a Lee Kwan Yew, an actual nation builder. 99% of Americans don't even know how that is lol.
Singapore notably enforces restrictions on migration of low skill labor. I think on balance that ends up benefiting their social nets, labor market, and efficient use of tax revenue. America is too far down the wrong road though. We’ve absorbed heavy, heavy numbers of unskilled migrants leading to significant population segments that are generations out from being self-supporting. That’s not to mention our pre-existing underclasses
He will slither back like the lizard man he is
great, bye bye
The crazy (funny?) thing to me is that there is a very small chance this bill gets any real traction, its basically all social media noise right now. Its a silly bill with no support from the governor, Id be highly surprised if anything like the current idea passes.
There is zero basis in this article that this office opening has anything to do with the tax, its just pure speculation