California turns up heat on billionaires who fled its wealth tax
The initiative’s drafters — tax law professors at the University of California Berkeley, University of Missouri, and UC Davis — project it would raise approximately $100 billion for healthcare, food assistance, and public education.
The most high-profile targets include Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $270 billion, who reportedly purchased a mansion on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe in December and listed Nevada as his home state on a campaign finance filing this year.
Venture capitalist and White House adviser David Sacks and Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick are also in the frame, having reported moves to Texas before the January 1 effective date.
A game of chess and a fight that will go to court
The FTB’s approach extends well beyond tracking days spent in-state. Its staff handbook instructs examiners to determine whether a former resident has “substantially severed his California connections upon his departure or whether he maintained his California connections in readiness for his return” — a test that covers children’s school enrollment, vehicle registrations, medical providers, and bank accounts.
Pat Dwyer, co-founder of Aligned Wealth and a financial adviser to ultra-high-net-worth clients, told the Financial Times the process amounts to high-stakes legal warfare.
