California’s explosive billionaire tax battle is tightening dramatically just weeks before voters decide whether to slap the state’s wealthiest residents with a one-time 5% levy on their fortunes.
Page F2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 26 September 2026
Billionaires bankroll two more ways to tax billionaires; support for the billionaire tax falls to 45 percent
As it ran on the front
You have one vote to spend, and three ways to tax a billionaire are printed on that California ballot. Two of the three were filed by the campaign the billionaires fund. Those two need not pass. A counter-initiative does its work by standing there, beside the measure that matters, carrying off a portion of the Yes. Nothing is broken. Nothing is even irregular.
Proposition 40 is a one-time five percent tax on the net worth of the state's two hundred billionaires. Two hundred. On the twenty-first of September, Nobel-winning economists called the measure a possible "turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy". On the twenty-second, the Berkeley Citrin Center and POLITICO put support at forty-five percent of registered voters. Forty-five — not beaten, mind you, simply fewer than half. Yesterday the Post described the fight tightening "dramatically", with voters now narrowly for it, weeks from the vote.…
…(cont) And what did it cost to move a tax on two hundred people to a dead heat? Two filings ... and the slice carried off need not be large. It need only be a slice. Five percent, once, on two hundred fortunes. That is the ask.
“They didn't beat the tax, they photocopied it — two rival versions parked on the same ballot so the yes vote gets split three ways and nobody has to win anything. Two hundred guys, one time, five percent of a net worth most of us can't even picture, and support's down to forty-five percent because they could afford to buy the confusion. Check what percentage of your net worth left your house last April.”
“More measures on a ballot is more choice, and more choice is more democracy — you people usually love that. Nobody prevented a single voter from voting yes on the one they prefer; did I say prefer? That doesn't sound like me. The numbers moved because Californians looked at a wealth levy and thought better of it, which is called persuasion.”
Earlier in this story
- Billionaires put two rival tax measures on the ballot; the tax on billionaires is now a dead heat By Sterling · the early evening edition, 25 September 2026
- Billionaire-backed group puts two more billionaire taxes on the California ballot, splitting the Yes three ways By Sterling · the early bird edition, 25 September 2026
The receipts
California's state ballot measure proposing a 5 percent tax on the state's 200 billionaires' net worth is losing support, according to a new poll released Monday. The University of California, Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research-POLITICO poll found that 45 percent of registered California voters support the ballot measure…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.