OMM Newsroom
California voters have rejected a ballot measure that would have introduced the first tax on the wealth of billionaire residents in the United States, according to a projection by Decision Desk HQ, Anadolu Agency reported.
With 76% of ballots counted as of 8:51 p.m. EST (0151 GMT Saturday), about 54% of voters opposed Proposition 40 and 46% backed it.
The proposal would have imposed a one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ wealth. Most of the revenue would have gone to state healthcare programs, with the remainder allocated to food assistance and education.
The state Democratic Party, the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Teamsters unions supported the measure. California Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed it.
Newsom, who is term-limited, said he supports a federal tax on billionaires but criticized the proposal for directing “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 June post on “Substack”.
Billionaires, including many Silicon Valley executives, gave more than $333 million to the nonprofit “Building a Better California” to oppose the measure.
The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that a tax on about 200 billionaires would have raised tens of billions of dollars.
