Yet the proposed California Billionaire Tax Act is a profoundly ill-conceived measure that threatens to inflict more damage than it promises relief. Far from a silver bullet for the state’s finances, it would introduce radical complexity, guarantee legal chaos, and virtually assure an exodus of high-wealth residents if enacted.

None of this means that California’s fiscal challenges aren’t real. But under current law the wealthy already pay a substantial share of the state’s income taxes. The top 1% of taxpayers—around 180,000 filers—pay 40% to 50% of all personal income taxes. They and the tech companies they founded also pay high corporate, capital gains, and payroll taxes.

The evidence is in. The impacts are very real—not just substantive economic impacts in terms of the revenue, but start-ups, the indirect impacts of … people questioning long term-commitments, medium-term. That’s not what we need right now, at a time of so much uncertainty. Quite the contrary.

The billionaire-tax movement depends heavily on stoking public outrage fueled by misleading statistics. Americans should be skeptical anytime activist academics present enormously complicated tax calculations as simple moral certainties.

Planned Parenthood’s board voted to oppose the billionaire tax because it thought the measure was poorly written and would provide only a one-time revenue boost at a time when California needs ongoing funding to recover from the impact of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was passed in July 2025.

Reviving this outdated experiment would be a fiscal and economic disaster.