The Wall Street Journal reports:

Backers of the proposed California billionaire tax believe they have gathered enough signatures to get the initiative on the November ballot, according to people familiar with the campaign, likely kicking off a bruising battle over the initiative.

More than 1.5 million people have signed a petition to get the one-time, 5% wealth tax on statewide ballots in November, the people said. County election officials must tally the signatures, verify them, and send them to California’s secretary of state before the measure can appear on the ballot. The people familiar with the campaign said they expect that will be more than enough to clear the required 875,000-signature threshold, even after accounting for illegible or invalid signatures.

The tax was proposed by the Service Employees International United Healthcare Workers West, which represents more than 120,000 healthcare workers, to offset cuts to healthcare funding in President Trump’s signature tax-and-spending law last year.

“When our growing coalition files these signatures, David will have won the first round against Goliath,” Suzanne Jimenez, spokeswoman for the Billionaire Tax Now coalition, said in a statement Sunday.

If passed, the tax would apply to the assets of individuals who resided in California as of Jan. 1 this year and who have net worths of $1 billion or more at the end of this year. SEIU-UHW says around 200 people meet those criteria.

The proposal still faces several hurdles before taking effect. The campaign needs to submit the signatures by early May to ensure election officials have enough time to tally them and certify the initiative for November ballots.

The proposal needs approval from a majority of California voters to pass. Attack ads are likely to paint the proposed tax as a long-term fiscal disaster for California, which relies heavily on its wealthiest residents’ income taxes to fill state coffers. The proposal also could face competing ballot initiatives as well as legal challenges to what several economists describe as a first-of-its-kind tax in the modern U.S.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes the tax, and has warned it could spark an exodus of the wealthy. Other billionaires have lambasted it as having a stifling effect on innovation or said they’d exited the Golden State in December. [Continue reading…]

Fortune reports:

Billionaires are becoming an even rarer species in California. A proposed one-time 5% tax on their wealth has led several of the state’s wealthiest residents, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to flee to Nevada and Florida. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is doubling down on his commitment to the Golden State.

“I say to everybody, ‘Move to California, don’t leave.’ It’s the highest taxes in the world, but it’s okay,” Huang said in conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business last week. He added that the great weather is a bonus. Of course, Huang wasn’t talking to just anyone, but one of the chief exponents of the wealth tax, nationwide and in California. [Continue reading…]