California’s 2026 Billionaire Tax Act (Initiative No. 25-0024) is a citizen-led ballot measure sponsored by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. It proposes a one-time 5% excise tax on the global net worth of individuals exceeding $1 billion, with a partial phase-out for those between $1 billion and $1.1 billion. Tax Foundation analysts have warned that aggressive design choices and possible drafting errors could push the effective rate well above 5% for some taxpayers. The initiative’s defining feature is its retroactive residency snapshot: anyone who was a California resident on January 1, 2026 would owe the tax even if they later moved, with voters set to decide on November 3, 2026. That single clause opened a narrow late-2025 window for roughly 200 affected individuals: stay and risk a levy on all global wealth, or establish a new domicile before New Year’s Eve.
The measure was projected to raise about $100 billion for Medi-Cal, food assistance, and education. A Hoover Institution study by Senior Fellow Joshua Rauh, Research Fellow Benjamin Jaros, Research Associate Gregory Kearney, and research analysts John Doran and Matheus Cosso found that billionaire departures had already removed $536 billion from the tax base before the initiative even qualified for the ballot, cutting projected revenue to roughly $40 billion. Factoring in the permanent loss of future income tax payments from those departed residents, the study placed the net present value at negative $24.7 billion for the state. In late April 2026, supporters submitted more than 1.5 million signatures, nearly double the roughly 875,000 required, formally putting the measure on course for the November ballot. Here is who walked, in order of net worth.
1. Larry Page (Florida) $274.7B
The Alphabet co-founder established primary residency in Florida and purchased over $173 million in real estate in Miami’s Coconut Grove. He also converted his family office Koop from a California-based entity to a Delaware corporation registered at a Florida address. Page and Brin’s combined departure accounted for an estimated $26.7 billion reduction in the initiative’s projected tax collections, according to the Hoover study.
2. Sergey Brin (Florida) $253.4B
Brin acquired a $51 million waterfront mansion on Allison Island in Miami Beach, purchasing the seven-bedroom property from LVMH executive Michael Burke through a Nevada-based LLC. He also shifted Alphabet-controlled entities to Florida to sever California ties. Brin co-founded Building a Better California alongside former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a political organization that raised roughly $80 million by late April 2026, with Brin contributing more than half of that total at approximately $45 million. The group is backing competing ballot initiatives designed to block or neutralize the wealth tax.
3. Mark Zuckerberg (Florida) $239.0B
In early 2026, reports confirmed that Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were acquiring a $170 million estate on Miami’s Indian Creek Island. Known in luxury real estate circles as the Billionaire Bunker, the island is already home to Jeff Bezos and Carl Icahn, and Brin’s Allison Island purchase placed three of the world’s five richest people within roughly 20 square miles of one another. A Meta spokesperson declined to confirm the change of primary residence, but the scale and timing of the purchase left little ambiguity. Under the wealth tax, Zuckerberg would have owed approximately $12 billion on his net worth as of January 1, 2026.
4. Peter Thiel (Florida) $27.5B
The PayPal and Palantir co-founder moved his family investment firm’s operations from California to Miami in late December 2025. His company remains headquartered in Los Angeles, but personal residency and family office functions shifted east. Thiel cited California’s “hostile” tax environment as the deciding factor, and separately donated $3 million to the California Business Roundtable, one of several opposition groups.
5. Travis Kalanick (Texas) $8.7B
The Uber founder and current CEO of Atoms (formerly City Storage Systems) completed his move to Austin on December 18, 2025. On a subsequent podcast, he described the timing as “prior to January.” Had he remained in California through the snapshot date, he would have owed between approximately $180 million and $435 million. The relocation coincided with a corporate rebrand and a strategic pivot toward industrial robotics and AI.
6. Don Hankey (Nevada) $8.2B
The Los Angeles native who built a fortune in auto lending left his Malibu estate for a $21 million penthouse in Las Vegas, saying high-net-worth individuals were no longer “wanted” in California. Luxury agents in Las Vegas reported that the California share of buyers in the market jumped from roughly 25% to nearly 80% after the tax proposal was announced, a shift Forbes linked directly to the initiative.
7. Steven Spielberg (New York) $7.1B
The director established new primary residency in New York City on January 1, 2026. His representatives cited a desire to be closer to family, but the timing placed him exactly on the residency snapshot date, leading fiscal analysts to include him in the tax-motivated cohort. New York carries its own high income tax rates, so the move was about breaking California residency rather than seeking a low-tax haven.
The Counterexample, and the Audit Risk
One prominent holdout refused to budge. NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg Television in January 2026 that he was “perfectly fine” with the tax, even though it would cost him approximately $8 billion. He doubled down at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in April, telling Congressman Ro Khanna: “I say to everybody, ‘Move to California, don’t leave.’ It’s the highest taxes in the world, but it’s okay.” His reasoning centers on workforce access: NVIDIA operates in Silicon Valley because that is where the talent is concentrated. Governor Gavin Newsom, notably, has opposed the tax despite sharing Huang’s affinity for the state, calling the proposal something that “makes no sense” and is “really damaging to the state.”
Those who left may still face a fight. The California Franchise Tax Board’s “close connection” residency audits scrutinize physical presence, retained business interests, and family ties to challenge domicile claims. The FTB completed 520 residency audits in 2023, more than double its 2019 pace. Constitutional questions also loom: because the tax applies retroactively to anyone who was a California resident as of January 1, 2026, legal challenges are widely expected if the measure passes. In May 2026, the editorial board of The Washington Post called the initiative “self-destructive,” concluding it “has already cost the state more in lost future revenue from income taxes than it would raise.” By June 2026, reporting revealed that dozens of wealthy Californians opposed to the tax had organized through private Signal group chats, coordinating opposition strategy as the November vote approaches.
Editor’s note: This update corrects the signature submission total to more than 1.5 million (submitted in late April 2026), adds the Hoover Institution’s finding that departing billionaires removed $536 billion from the tax base, includes the Tax Foundation’s warning that effective rates could exceed 5%, adds Brin’s approximately $45 million contribution to Building a Better California, and incorporates June 2026 reporting on a coordinated billionaire opposition effort organized through private Signal chats.
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