On April 27, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) delivered more than 1.5 million signatures for a one-time 5% wealth tax on California’s roughly 200 billionaires.
Qualification requires 875,000 valid names. County election officials will verify the haul before forwarding it to the Secretary of State, but the margin is wide enough to absorb losses from illegible or duplicate entries.
What the Tax Would Do
If voters approve the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act in November, every California resident whose net worth exceeded US$1 billion on January 1, 2026, would owe 5% of that wealth to the state. A smaller rate applies to those worth between US$1 billion and US$1.1 billion. Relocation since that date would not erase the obligation; the cutoff is retroactive.
SEIU-UHW projects US$100 billion in revenue over five years, earmarked for hospital and clinic preservation, K-14 public education, and state food assistance. Put concretely: a resident worth US$20 billion on the assessment date would owe US$1 billion, payable in installments over five years.
The Exodus Has Already Begun
Six of the state’s estimated 214 billionaires left California before the January 1 cutoff. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin relocated, as did former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. By SEIU-UHW’s own math, those departures wiped out roughly US$26.8 billion in taxable wealth, more than a quarter of the projected take.
The capital flight extends well beyond six names. Chamath Palihapitiya estimated in February 2026 that US$700 billion had moved out of California since the initiative was announced. Forbes traced a lakefront buying spree on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe directly to billionaire tax planning.
David Lesperance, Managing Director of Lesperance & Associates, described the signature milestone in blunt terms: “After playing with matches since October, the SEIU has succeeded in lighting a ‘Tax the Rich’ wildfire by getting enough signatures. The many billionaire targets of their efforts have already responded by executing fire escape plans by relocating to other states.”
At a press conference Monday, SEIU-UHW Chief of Staff Suzanne Jimenez dismissed the exodus concern, arguing most of the state’s billionaires built their lives in California and would not abandon it over a one-time levy.
Billionaire-Funded Counter-Offensive
Brin and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt co-founded Building a Better California to fight the measure. The group raised over US$80 million in Q1 2026 alone and is now advancing three counter-ballot initiatives.
The most aggressive would amend the state constitution to ban retroactive taxation outright, which would invalidate the wealth tax’s core enforcement mechanism.
A second measure targets education spending allocation rules that new taxes must comply with. The third would layer additional audits and spending restrictions onto revenue from any new levy.
Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, Ripple chairman Chris Larsen, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison contributed through overlapping opposition vehicles. Total spending by ultrawealthy donors on California’s 2026 election cycle has exceeded US$270 million, according to Fortune.
Governor Gavin Newsom has opposed the measure publicly, warning that driving out top earners would crater the state budget. His concern is arithmetically grounded: the top 1% of California filers supply nearly half the state’s personal income tax revenue.
Lesperance sees the next seven months as a communications battle with lopsided odds. “Education requires getting the attention of voters long enough to overcome the ‘Tax the Rich’ propaganda, which fits on a T-shirt, protest sign, or coffee mug,” he observed.
Bipartisan Opposition, Progressive Division
Senator Bernie Sanders and former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich have both endorsed the tax. Sanders rallied for it in Los Angeles in February. Yet none of California’s leading gubernatorial candidates have followed their lead.
Progressive Democrats in the state legislature are privately split, according to CalMatters. Three union leaders and five members of the Legislative Progressive Caucus criticized the measure off the record; only one lawmaker would do so publicly. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, meanwhile, broke with his fellow billionaires, urging people to move to California rather than leave.
The Investment Migration Angle
When SEIU-UHW first filed the initiative in October 2025, Lesperance warned that his clients were thinking beyond state lines. The signature milestone has sharpened that calculus.
“Unfortunately, several federal progressive Democratic politicians will be emboldened by the SEIU’s success and will push hard to sell their own wealth tax proposals to US voters,” Lesperance warned. “In response, high-net-worth individuals starting at US$50 million in net worth are also engaging lobbyists, reorganizing their finances, and getting plans to entirely leave the US tax system, should the Democrats sweep both houses of Congress and the White House in November 2028.”
Lesperance outlined three simultaneous strategies his clients are pursuing. The first is political: locating and financially supporting lobbyists to oppose wealth tax legislation.
The second is structural tax planning, maximizing currently legal tools such as the gift and estate tax exemption, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), and Puerto Rico’s Act 60 to move assets beyond the reach of a future tax.
The third strategy is where investment migration enters directly. “Fire insurance and fire escape plan: acquiring a second citizenship and incorporating in fire prevention planning with their fire escape plan that reduces exposure to exit and inheritance tax,” Lesperance explained.
Caribbean citizenship by investment (CBI) programs, Portuguese residency pathways, and Gulf state alternatives with territorial tax systems have drawn growing interest from Americans weighing expatriation. Academic research from Sweden and Denmark found that each percentage-point increase in wealth taxation correlated with 2% outward migration among wealthy taxpayers.
California’s proposed rate is five times that threshold. Constitutional challenges are expected if the measure passes, with legal scholars arguing the retroactive provision could violate state due process protections. A simple majority of voters in November is all that separates the initiative from law.
