California tax bill would likely be an ‘orphan’ with ‘surprising’ financial and political consequences

Sociology

8/26/2026

Democratic leaders in San Francisco are expected to voice their opposition today to a tax on California billionaires, breaking sharply with the progressive ballot measure in a city where Democrats otherwise hold near-total sway.

Cristobal Young, is a professor at Cornell University and researches the social consequences of elite taxation. He says the billionaire tax proposal in California is a fascinating experiment because it pushes state taxation into territory we have never really seen before.

Young says: “Overall, I’m skeptical that this is the right policy: it imposes unprecedented one-time tax bills on a very small number of people, is difficult for other states to replicate, and leaves the underlying problem of how to tax billionaire wealth unresolved. The policy raises a few main concerns.

“It’s a one-time fix for a permanent problem. The proposal would raise money once, but it does not address the underlying problem in the tax system. The longer-term goal should be to tax gains in billionaire wealth, including unrealized capital gains, much more like regular income. The proposal does not do that.

“A very small number of people would face tax bills larger than anything we have seen before. Sergey Brin, for example, could owe roughly $13 billion. At that scale, the behavioral, financial, and political consequences could be surprising.

“Ultimately, billionaire taxation makes more sense at the federal level. In most states, a billionaire tax would apply to fewer than 20 taxpayers. Rather than creating a model for other states, the California tax would largely be an orphan—few other states have enough billionaires for a tax like this to be feasible."