“And despite the fear mongering, the people that are leaving California aren’t the wealthy - in fact, California ranks among the lowest for residents with incomes above $200,000 leaving their respective states,” said Lee.
The proposed plan will be a constitutional amendment because the California Constitution currently limits the tax rate on personal property to 0.4%. The proposed wealth tax is paired with a constitutional amendment and will apply a 1% tax on extreme wealth of $50 million or more per household and 1.5% on wealth in excess of one billion dollars. “With this modest tax on the ultra-wealthy who pay a lower effective tax rate than the bottom 99%, we would have sustained investments in our schools, tackle homelessness, maintain and expand needed services, and much more,” said Assemblymember Alex Lee. For example, the richest Californians like Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, or Larry Page, can avoid the California income tax as long as they do not sell their stocks. Similarly, while the California income tax is successful at taxing most Californians, it is not very effective at taxing the ultra-wealthy. By increasing their fortunes in assets such as stocks and property and then borrowing off those assets, they are able to avoid selling the assets and paying capital gains taxes. The ProPublica analysis released in 2021 revealed that the richest 25 Americans pay just a tiny fraction of their wealth in taxes, and some are able to pay little to nothing in income tax, with effective tax rates lower than the average American. This tax would apply to households with net worths of more than $50 million, or the top 0.1% of Californians, and would generate an estimated $21.6 billion annually - roughly the same amount as the projected budget shortfall from the Governor’s proposed budget this year. In a concerted effort with seven other states, Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José) has reintroduced the tax on extreme wealth in California as AB 259 and an accompanying proposed constitutional amendment, ACA 3.
0 kommentar(er)
