The union leader who helped craft California’s contentious billionaire tax is rejecting claims that the measure is already prompting wealthy residents to leave the state, calling those warnings “entirely fabricated” as debate intensifies ahead of the November election.
Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), pushed back on criticism from Gov. Gavin Newsom, business organizations and prominent figures in Silicon Valley, insisting there is “absolutely no evidence” that the proposed one-time tax is causing billionaires to abandon California.
“There is absolutely no evidence that billionaires leave,” Regan told KCRA’s Ashley Zavala on Sunday, after the proposal qualified for the November ballot.
“Billionaires are the wealthiest people on the planet. They can live wherever they want in the world, let alone in the country.”
Regan said opponents are relying on a familiar argument that has not been borne out in other states that adopted higher taxes on the wealthy.
“All of the evidence, all of the research, all of the data that we have is that the very wealthy make this argument every single time,” Regan said, citing Massachusetts’ millionaire tax as an example.
“Everybody said they were going to go to New Hampshire, and they were going to go to other states. It’s just not true.
“The governor can say it as many times as he wants, but the facts are not on his side,” he added.
His comments come months after reports that at least six California billionaires had already severed their residency before Jan. 1 — the cutoff date written into the ballot measure to avoid the proposed tax.
Among those who have reportedly left or significantly shifted their residency are Google co-founder Larry Page, who has established a presence in Florida after purchasing more than $170 million worth of Miami-area real estate; Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, who has deepened his Florida ties and already votes there; and venture capitalist David Sacks, who relocated from San Francisco to Austin, Texas.
Others have reportedly followed similar paths.
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Google co-founder Sergey Brin has been linked to South Florida real estate while also relocating to Nevada’s Lake Tahoe region.
SpaceX investor Steve Jurvetson and AI executive Naveen Rao have also reportedly moved to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Oracle founder Larry Ellison have established residences outside California in recent years, while former Hewlett-Packard and eBay CEO Meg Whitman recently sold her sprawling Northern California ranch amid the growing debate over the proposal.
Tax adviser David Lesperance previously said he personally helped four billionaire clients terminate their California residency before the Jan. 1 deadline, while wealth managers have warned that another 15 to 20 billionaire families could leave if voters ultimately approve the measure.
Regan rejected those warnings outright.
“The tax that we’re proposing is a one-time tax based on whether or not someone was a resident of the state of California on Jan. 1 of this year,” he said. “So there is no incentive for billionaires to leave. Their status as a legal resident is already ingrained.”
“Even to pursue the idea that there’s incentive to leave is just false,” he continued. “All of the evidence tells us that it’s not true, and there’s no reason to believe these claims are true either.”
The California Billionaire Tax Act officially qualified for the November ballot after supporters gathered enough signatures. The measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on California residents whose net worth exceeded $1 billion as of Jan. 1, 2026, with supporters estimating it could raise roughly $100 billion.
Ninety percent of the proceeds would be directed toward healthcare programs, including Medi-Cal, while the remaining 10% would fund education and food assistance.
Regan said the proposal is necessary to offset looming federal healthcare cuts.
“This is a one-time emergency tax to address the collapse of our healthcare system in California and the loss of healthcare coverage for three-and-a-half million people,” he said. “When it’s passed, it will raise $100 billion to address that specific problem that no one, including the governor, has a solution for.
“The idea that putting $100 billion into the healthcare system to keep millions and millions of people in a secure position — and facilities and clinics and hospitals open — somehow means less revenue doesn’t make any sense,” Regan added. “I don’t know why they’re allowed to make these really nutty claims.”
The measure has become one of the year’s most contentious political fights after Newsom vowed to campaign against it, arguing a California-only wealth tax would drive away investment and ultimately cost the state more than it raises.
Supporters even offered to reduce the tax from 5% to 2% during negotiations with Newsom, but the governor rejected the proposal, saying the state-level measure remained fundamentally flawed.
The billionaire tax also won’t be alone on the November ballot.
Opponents backed by Building A Better California — a campaign supported by Brin, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and other wealthy Californians — successfully qualified several competing ballot measures designed to undercut the tax if both pass.
One proposal would require expanded audits of programs funded through new special taxes and includes provisions critics say could complicate implementation of the billionaire tax.
Other competing initiatives would prohibit retroactive taxes on personal financial assets and restrict lawmakers from exempting new tax revenue from California’s constitutional spending limits — provisions aimed squarely at the billionaire tax’s retroactive Jan. 1 trigger and its funding structure.
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