The designers of the California wealth tax have been saying for weeks that the tax would work because billionaires wouldn't really get up and leave California. Articles like this one have popped up saying the claim of wealthy people fleeing the state is a myth.
“Big business and their lobbyists are always crying wolf,” said Peter Dreier, an urban policy analyst, researcher and professor emeritus of politics at Occidental College. “It happens whenever politicians or movements suggest reforms that would hold them accountable — would make them act more responsibly towards consumers, workers, the environment or the public interest.
“Whenever business doesn’t like being held accountable or having any standard set for its behavior by government, they say it’ll kill jobs or that the businesses will move out,” Dreier added. “Ninety-five percent of the time they’re lying.”
There is almost no historical evidence to support the idea that higher state taxes cause rich people to move from where they live. “Tax flight” among the ultrawealthy is largely a myth, including in California.
And yet, people keep leaving. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mark Zuckerberg was buying a house in Miami.
Billionaire Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are the latest California billionaires to buy a home in South Florida.
The couple is purchasing a newly completed waterfront mansion on Miami’s Indian Creek, according to sources with knowledge of the transaction. Zuckerberg already has an extensive luxury real-estate portfolio, with properties in Lake Tahoe, Palo Alto, Calif., and on the Hawaiian island of Kauai...
Zuckerberg is the latest tech billionaire to descend on Miami as California proposes a 5% billionaire tax; Florida offers no state income tax, which for billionaires like Zuckerberg and Bezos adds up to millions of dollars. Real-estate agents in South Florida say they have been working non-stop showing properties to Californians since the possibility of the new tax was announced. “The 5% tax in California is really driving out people in a major way,” said Danny Hertzberg, a Miami real-estate agent at Coldwell Banker Realty.
Fox News has also spoken to local real estate agents about the influx of buyers from California.
Many South Florida real estate agents have told Fox News Digital that since the new year, a fresh wave of buyer interest has flooded in from California, with increased calls and broker website traffic...
"There's a few other very big founders and also tech giants and also venture capitalist firms, the heads of which I've also moved here," luxury real estate broker Julian Johnston of The Corcoran Group previously said...
"One client said, ‘You know, this could be like a $5 billion tax for me,’" he recalled. "So they’re moving because of that."
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has been keeping track of the exodus. He is specifically blaming Gov. Newsom for not coming out against this tax plan sooner.
With Zuck’s move to Florida, California’s total taxable wealth from billionaires has plummeted to well under $1T from over $2T just a few weeks ago.
— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) February 10, 2026
The loss of this tax revenue was totally avoidable but is now forever. All because Gavin Newsom stood motionless as this stupidly… https://t.co/lJpzhTkMH6
With Zuck’s move to Florida, California’s total taxable wealth from billionaires has plummeted to well under $1T from over $2T just a few weeks ago.
The loss of this tax revenue was totally avoidable but is now forever. All because Gavin Newsom stood motionless as this stupidly written bill, from a fringe union and a handful of socialist academics with an axe to grind, meandered its way into the public conversation without any action from him and freaked everyone out.
These were all people that were paying 13%+ in state income tax every year WITH NO COMPLAINTS UNTIL A FEW WEEKS AGO.
And now, for the rest of time, the lost tax revenues from these folks will have to be paid for by the middle class because they are the only group left in California large enough that you can tax to fill the hole.
He’s forsaken the middle class instead of managing the budget, managing the deficit, eliminating even a portion of California’s gargantuan waste and abuse. He could have done any of these things at any point over the past 7+ years.
But he was silent.
And now California’s budget will implode and he wants to run for President.
Insane.
It really is insane that the academics behind this thought it would work. More than half of the money they intended to tax has already left the state and those who leave a few months late to avoid the retroactive nature of the tax will fight it in court and they will eventually win. Even if this passes, the amount of money it brings in will be a fraction of what they intended.
