“A true minimum tax on billionaires, that ensures the people at the very top pay at least the tax rate their own workers pay.” That is how California Gov. Gavin Newsom described his plan in a video posted on social media Friday. He called it part of an “economic reset.”
Newsom wants that reset to come from Washington. His proposal would rewrite the federal tax code, including the corporate and inheritance rules, which he says now favor the richest Americans most.
He is also fighting a billionaires’ tax at home. A state initiative that would impose a one-time tax on people with a net worth of at least $1 billion has qualified for the November ballot. The money would go to health care programs in California. The healthcare union SEIU-UHW backs the measure, as do progressive Democrats in the state.
Newsom has joined groups such as CalChamber in opposing it. “This is not how we should set California’s budget priorities,” he wrote on his Substack. “We can’t let a single advocacy organization, however well-intentioned, write the state’s tax code on its own terms.”
His argument for going national rests on mobility. “The fight to make the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes is not one we should be fighting state by state,” Newsom wrote. “You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do.”
