California may be losing two of the state's most famed residents and generous political donors. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg recently moved to New York and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is eyeing purchasing a new property in Florida, stirring speculation about whether their decisions are tied to a proposed new tax on California billionaires to fund healthcare for the state's most vulnerable residents.
"California's proposed wealth tax is an unprecedented attempt to chase down people who have already left as a result of the state's poor policies," Kiley said in a statement Wednesday. "Many of our state's leading job creators are leaving preemptively."
Sen. Bernie Sanders will formally launch a campaign next week to place a one-time 5% tax on the assets of California's billionaires. Supporters argue it's essential to prevent millions of the state's most vulnerable residents from losing access to healthcare because of federal funding cut; opponents warn it will drive wealthy entrepreneurs to flee the state and stifle innovation. Gov. Gavin Newsom, despite Sanders' popularity in California, joins opponents warning the tax would damage the state's competitive edge.
Brin has committed $20 million to a new organization called Building a Better California, a political and policy effort aimed squarely at California's worsening housing affordability problems, recent state disclosures show, as first reported by The New York Times. The money is part of a broader $35 million launch package that also includes $15 million from eight other wealthy business leaders, among them former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who each contributed $2 million.
"I think capitalism is a great system that probably has, you know, enriched the lives of billions of people," he told Fortune over Zoom from his office in Berkeley, where he teaches courses on tax and nonprofit law. "But I'm not sure that our system is a functioning capitalist system right now."
New York City and Mayor Zohran Mamdani find themselves in deep economic water. The city is staring at a $12 billion budget hole that must be filled by June 30, a massive economic challenge for any mayor, let alone one on the job for just 22 days like Mamdani. Without question, a deficit of this size will hinder Mamdani's ability to realize much of the affordability agenda that propelled him to the highest office in New York City last year.
Billionaire wealth jumped three times faster in 2025 than in the previous five years to its highest peak ever, new figures have has shown, sparking warnings of dangerous political inequality. Figures published by the charity Oxfam show that in the UK, the richest 56 people now hold more wealth than 27 million combined. Calling on the government to impose a wealth tax,
I don't understand why the billionaires just aren't calling good tax lawyers," he told The San Francisco Standard this week. Gamage insists founders wouldn't be forced to sell. Those with most of their wealth in private stock could open a deferral account for assets they don't want taxed immediately - California would instead take 5% whenever those shares are eventually sold.
California's proposed wealth tax is coming in for a lot of criticism these days. From Gov. Gavin Newsom, who counts many billionaires as friends and donors and yet was raised by a single mother juggling three jobs, to Anduril founder Palmer Luckey's vociferous objections, to the Google guys Larry Page and Sergey Brin voting with their feet, much of the Golden State's ultrawealthy is objecting to this policy. But what if the policy wouldn't even work that well, once implemented?
I just felt like education, healthcare, all the things I care about that equalize society, were not being paid attention to [in Florida],
An entity tied to Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page moved out of California at the end of 2025, beating the deadline on a proposed wealth tax of the state's rich and powerful. T-Rex LLC, formed in 2006 and linked to Brin and Page, converted out of California into a Delaware LLC called T-Rex Holdings on December 24, 2025, according to a California filing reviewed by Business Insider. Prior filings over the past 20 years listed Brin and Page as managers of the LLC at a Palo Alto address.
Two council members, Greer Stone and Keith Rechdahl, have proposed regulations to stop assembling groups of neighboring homes to form a compound, as Zuckerberg has done. Neighbors have complained about construction noise, unmarked security vehicles and a loss of parking. Billionaires have done this previously in Palo Alto, such as when Google co-founder Larry Page bought up the properties of his neighbors on Bryant Street in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood.
France's lower house on Friday rejected a wealth tax proposed by the left, which has threatened to bring down the government if a levy on the super-rich is not in the budget. France is under pressure to pass a spending bill by the end of the year to rein in its deficit and soaring debt, but efforts have been hampered by a political deadlock.
The French Socialist party says it will fight to introduce a flagship wealth tax to raise revenue by targeting France's richest people, as the divided parliament prepares to begin debating next year's budget. Boris Vallaud, the head of the Socialist party grouping in parliament, said on Wednesday that taxing very high-wealth individuals in France was one of our principal battles and we're going to put all our energy into it.
French trade unions are leading a day of strikes on Thursday as they try to maintain pressure on the new prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, to rethink budget cuts and consider a form of wealth tax on the super-rich. Lecornu has still not formed a new government after being appointed on 9 September amid a political crisis when his predecessor, Francois Bayrou, was dramatically ousted over proposed budget cuts.
Reeves said the exchange scheme would allow young people in Britain to be able to go and work, to travel, to volunteer, to gain experience, to learn languages in European countries. And we want young people from those European countries to also be able to come to the UK and have the same opportunities that my generation had to travel, work and study in Europe, she said.
