Zuckerberg has agreed to remain in California for eight years as part of a board-approved plan to create new shares he can sell to pay a proposed wealth tax.
Page F124From§Eachthe morning edition — 22 October 2026
THE WORKAROUND
Zuckerberg preps to pay the tax Newsom just endorsed abolishing, its funder dining with Trump that week.
As it ran on the front
On August 25th, groups backed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Peter Thiel opened an advertising campaign against a one-time, 5 percent tax on California billionaires, run under the names Building a Better California and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes. Brin alone has put more than $100 million into defeating it.
Four weeks later, on September 21st, six Nobel laureate economists, Joseph Stiglitz among them, signed a letter backing the same tax, calling it a possible first in the country and a start on redistributing wealth concentrated at the top. The column balances like this, hon: the people who study wealth favor the tax; the people who hold it are buying airtime against it.…
…(cont) On October 11th, Governor Gavin Newsom settled which side the state's own chief executive sits on. He endorsed a competing ballot measure that would cancel the wealth tax outright and bar California from ever passing another tax on financial assets. Debru Carthan, vice president of SEIU-UHW, the union running the tax campaign Newsom had just undercut, said of the governor: "He's showing California his true colors."
That weekend, Brin had dinner with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago, seated to his left at a fundraising dinner hosted by the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc.
Three days after that report, on October 22nd, a federal filing disclosed the outcome of Meta's months-long negotiation with its own chief executive: Mark Zuckerberg agreed to stay in California for eight years, in exchange for a board-approved plan to issue new shares he can sell to pay the very tax Newsom's measure is built to cancel. Economist Gabriel Zucman called the filing "huge," writing that "we are witnessing a global turning point unfold before our eyes."
Run the two filings side by side and the gap is not a contradiction, it is a hedge. One instrument prepares a man worth $239 billion to pay a tax he has not yet lost. The other, backed by the governor who is supposed to be collecting it, is built to make sure he never has to. Both are dated this October. Only one of them made the papers as a victory for the tax.
“They want you thinking this is a philosophy fight about whether billionaires should pay their share. It's not — Zuckerberg already built the machine to pay the tax if it passes, the same week the guy bankrolling the ad campaign to kill it was having dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. That's not two stories about two rich guys. That's one guy covering both sides of the same bet.”
“Look, Prop — whatever number it is, the anti-tax one — isn't about protecting billionaires, it's about protecting jobs. You tax wealth, you chase off the job creators, and Governor Newsom gets that, that's why he's standing with — wait, Newsom's a Democrat, why am I the one defending him on this? Forget I said that.”
The receipts
California Gov. Gavin Newsom ramped up his opposition to a proposed tax on the state's billionaire residents on Friday by endorsing a competing ballot measure that would both cancel out the billionaire wealth tax initiative and prohibit any new taxes on the ownership of financial assets or other personal property. "He’s showing…
Meta Platforms struck a deal with its CEO Mark Zuckerberg to keep him residing in California as the state prepares to vote on a billionaire tax in November. Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth is about $239 billion, making him the 6th richest person in the world, according to Forbes. He has been negotiating with his own […]
Federal filings released Wednesday reveal how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of the richest men in the world, is getting ready to potentially pay a billionaire wealth tax that is on California's November midterm ballot—an indication of the grassroots campaign's impact. "This is huge," economist Gabriel Zucman, an outspoken supporter of…
Billionaire Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has spent more than $100 million fighting a proposed wealth tax in California, shared a lavish dinner with billionaire US President Donald Trump over the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida as millions of American families struggle to afford groceries, healthcare, and…
· Billionaire-Backed Groups Launch Ad Blitz Against California Wealth Tax from the morgue, 25 Aug 2026
· Nobel Prize-Winning Economists Back First Billionaire Tax in US from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026
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.