California Voters Crush Billionaire Tax in US First

(MENAFN) California voters have defeated a ballot measure that would have made the state the first in the US to tax the wealth of its billionaire residents, according to a projection by a US election-results organization.

With 76% of ballots counted as of 8.51 pm EST (0151GMT Saturday), about 54% of voters opposed Proposition 40, while 46% supported it.

The proposal called for a one-time 5% levy on billionaires’ wealth. Most of the proceeds would have gone to state healthcare programs, with the remainder directed to food assistance and education.

The California Democratic Party, the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Teamsters unions backed the measure. Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed it.

The term-limited governor said he supports a federal billionaire tax but objected to the plan for sending “almost all of the revenue” to healthcare.

“There is nothing for housing, nothing for childcare, nothing for public safety workers who must answer 911 calls, and nothing for our public universities that have powered California’s economy for a decade,” he wrote in a Substack post in June.

Billionaires, among them many Silicon Valley executives, contributed more than $333 million to the nonprofit Building a Better California to fight the measure.

The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that taxing roughly 200 billionaires would have raised tens of billions of dollars.

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