The controversial 5% wealth tax could cost the Golden State’s record 246 billionaires anywhere from $50 million to $13 billion apiece. Whatever the sum, it has a number of its richest and most famous residents plotting moves.
By Forbes Wealth Team, Kirk Ogunrinde, Alicia Park, Luisa Kroll, Janet Novack and Chase Peterson-Withorn
A number of billionaires in the Golden State are fired up over a possible one-time 5% tax on their wealth. The proposal, sponsored by the Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West and first put forth in October, still has to get 875,000 valid voter signatures by June to even make it onto next year’s ballot. It then would face legal challenges not to mention an uphill battle in the voting booths.
That hasn’t stopped California’s richest people from sounding the alarms. On Monday, Rippling’s billionaire CEO Parker Conrad posted “Leave California before the series B.” Uber founder Travis Kalanick resurfaced a 2009 blog post he wrote on California’s high taxes, adding that “California has been the most wasteful and most corrupt of all the 50 states for a lonnnnggg time.” Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has taken to X daily, denouncing the proposed tax as an asset seizure and posting economic data showing rising spending. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you,” he tweeted on Tuesday, calling it an “absolutely horrible idea” that will ruin California’s tech economy.
Some longtime residents are already packing up. Oracle’s Larry Ellison—who switched his voter registration to Florida in 2023 —has more than $1 billion in personal real estate, including a Hawaiian island and waterfront complex in Manalapan, Florida; he sold his Pacific Heights home in December for $45 million, a move that could have been tied to the January 1, 2026 deadline for determining residency for the potential billionaire tax.
Google cofounder Larry Page meanwhile spent $173.5 million on two Miami properties in December, just under the wire for moving, according to some. More than 45 companies associated with Page have filed documents to terminate or move out of the state in recent weeks, according to a New York Times analysis. Peter Thiel’s investment firm, Thiel Capital, announced on New Year’s Eve that it had opened a Miami office while Thiel, who settled in California nearly 50 years ago, gave $3 million in December to the California Business Roundtable, a state business lobby that will be pushing back on the tax. Even several democrats have panned it. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman called the proposed tax “badly designed in so many ways that a simple social post cannot cover all of the massive flaws.”
Meanwhile, Democratic governor Gavin Newsom told the New York Times on Monday that he would fight it to protect the state. Only one billionaire has publicly taken it in stride. “We chose to live in Silicon Valley and whatever taxes I guess they would like to apply, so be it,” Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said on Bloomberg TV. “I’m perfectly fine with it.”
This battle over taxes is not new. California already has the highest state income tax rate in the nation, at 13.3%, including a 1% surcharge on income over $1 million that was passed by voter referendum in 2004. Some billionaires left the state long ago.
“Everyone’s going to go to tax-free states. Why would you ever start a business in a state like California?,” says Russell Savage, who launched energy drink Rockstar in 2001 using a $50,000 mortgage on his Sausalito, California Condo. Savage, formerly known as Russ Weiner, moved to Florida nearly two decades ago. “Larry Ellison left. I left. Elon Musk left. You go down the line. I mean, the proof is in the pudding.” He has a point: more than 30 billionaires have moved away from California since 2010, for a variety of reasons, including venture capitalist Jim Breyer, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale and In-N-Out’s Lynsi Snyder.
But, despite the griping and the departures, California has its appeal, and is still arguably the best spot to make a tech fortune. Thanks to the AI gold rush, there are now a record 246 billionaires living in the Golden State, up from 219 in March when Forbes locked in our 2025 Billionaires list. That’s more than any other state. The next closest is New York, another high tax state with 157 billionaires, while Florida is home to 130 and Texas just 85. California’s billionaires are worth $2.1 trillion, another record, up 19% since March, more than triple the tax being discussed. (If Page and Brin who are worth more than $500 billion combined do move out of state, that number could tumble.)
The academics who helped craft the proposal are unconcerned. “When the dust clears, it’s consistently and robustly found in the academic literature that very few, if any, actually move,” says David Gamage, one of the proposal’s authors and a professor at University of Missouri School of Law. Gamage and his colleagues estimate (based, they say, on Forbes’ billionaire valuations), that the tax would raise about $100 billion from 200 plus California billionaires, with that money flowing into the state’s coffers between 2027 and 2031. A Forbes analysis of California billionaires’ holdings yields a slightly higher figure of $104 billion, based on net worths as of January 11. The typical Golden State billionaire would have to pay $147 million—but the potential tax bills range from less than $50 million all the way to $13.4 billion for Page, if the bill passes and he is determined to still be a California resident. Of course, these numbers will change daily based on stock market fluctuations: while the proposal plans to base residency on where these folks lived as of January 1, the net worths will be measured roughly a year from now. Who knows what stocks will do between now and then, or what tricks those who stay will use to avoid a looming tax bill.
Here are estimates of what some of the most notable California billionaires would pay under the proposed plan, based on their recent net worths:
Larry Page
Net worth: $268.1 billion Est tax bill: $13.4 bil
The Michigan native who headed west for graduate school at Stanford nearly three decades ago and created tech behemoth Alphabet (parent company of Google) seems to be moving on. In the last month, more than 45 companies associated with Page filed documents to terminate or move out of the state. Page, who is an Alphabet board member and the largest individual shareholder of the Mountain View-based company, also spent a reported $101.5 million on a waterfront estate in Miami and $72 million for a nearby mansion, both in December, the deadline for leaving the state if the tax were to go through. For now at least, he appears to still own two homes in Palo Alto, California, worth around $33 million.
Sergey Brin
Net worth: $247.4 billion Est tax bill: $12.4 bil
Page’s Stanford classmate, Brin cofounded Google out of friend Susan Wojcicki’s (d. 2024) garage in Menlo Park, California. Twice divorced, with at least three kids in California, he owns three properties across Los Altos and Malibu, worth roughly $57 million. In the last month, Brin has joined Page in cutting some ties with the state, reportedly terminating or moving at least 15 companies associated with his name out of the state—seven of them were changed to Nevada entities, according to The New York Times.
Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $221.8 billion Est tax bill: $11 bil
Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room before moving the company to Silicon Valley in 2004, shortly after its launch. Now known as Meta, the internet giant also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, and has heavily invested in AI development in recent years. Zuckerberg and his wife have deep roots in the state. The couple has donated over $600 million to the University of California system and $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital. They own five personal real estate properties in Palo Alto, worth nearly $50 million in all, and have a $71 million home on Lake Tahoe.
Jensen Huang
Net worth: $160 billion Est tax bill: $8 bil
After earning his masters degree from Stanford, the Taiwan-born Huang sketched out the idea for Nvidia in a San Jose Denny’s booth in 1993. Headquartered in Santa Clara, the chip maker has become one of the hottest stocks leading the AI boom. Huang is the most prominent Californian to say he won’t fight the tax, telling Bloomberg TV last week that he hadn’t even thought about it. “We chose to live in Silicon Valley and whatever taxes I guess they would like to apply, so be it. I’m perfectly fine with it.”
Peter Thiel
Net worth: $26 billion Est tax bill: $1.5 bil
Thiel, who settled in California with his family around 1977 and later graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School, has had a hand in founding or backing some of Silicon Valley’s prominent companies, including Facebook, PayPal and Palantir. A long-term backer of Trump whose venture capital business once employed Vice President JD Vance, Thiel is exploring leaving California and recently donated $3 million to the political committee of the California Business Roundtable, a lobby group opposing the tax. Meanwhile, his Los Angeles-based investment firm, Thiel Capital, recently signed a lease in Miami for office space, according to a press release.
Steven Spielberg
Net worth: $7.1 billion Est tax bill: $350 mil
Spielberg moved to California for college, graduating from California State University in Long Beach. The filmmaker cofounded two massive movie studios – Amblin Entertainment in 1980, and DreamWorks in 1994 – both at University City, California. He now resides in a $30 million Pacific Palisades mansion.
George Lucas
Net worth: $5.3 billion Est tax bill: $250 mil
Lucas grew up in Modesto and attended the University of Southern California before establishing Lucasfilm in San Francisco. The Star Wars director’s iconic “Skywalker Ranch” and his George Lucas Educational Foundation are both located in Marin County. Lucas also owns a $40 million pad in Carpinteria, a $50 million estate in San Anselmo and a $35 million mansion in Los Angeles.
Kim Kardashian
Net worth: $1.9 billion Est tax bill: $90 mil
Kardashian grew up in Los Angeles and established herself as a media personality through the LA-based “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” show. The billionaire founded Skims, an undergarment company headquartered in Los Angeles in 2019, and has attempted to become a California-licensed lawyer. Kardashian owns four properties in the state, including a $63 million Malibu mansion and the Hidden Hills estate she shared with her former husband Kanye West.
Magic Johnson
Net worth: $1.5 billion Est tax bill: $75 mil
Johnson spent his entire basketball career playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, winning the NBA championship five times and briefly owning part of the team. His investment company, Magic Johnson Enterprises, is based in Beverly Hills and has invested in other sporting franchises, including the LA Dodgers, the Washington Commanders and the Washington Spirit. Johnson has been a key community figure in the Golden State, having the Magic Johnson Park named after him for his impact. He owns two California properties that are together worth close to $30 million.
LeBron James
Net worth: $1.3 Billion Est tax bill: $60 mil
James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, has spent his last seven years playing for the Lakers. His primary residence is a Brentwood mansion he bought in 2017, but he’s building an even bigger spread for himself in Beverly Hills, on a site he purchased for $37 million in 2020. The Cleveland native is also an investor in Pasadena-founded Blaze Pizza, which moved its headquarters to Atlanta in 2024.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Net worth: $1.2 billion Est tax bill: $60 mil
Schwarzenegger served as governor of California from 2003 to 2011, proposing amendments prohibiting California from spending more than it collected in taxes to rein in the state’s budget deficit, furloughing hundreds of thousands of state workers, raising the minimum wage and proposing universal health insurance. The Austrian-born bodybuilder and actor owns a $23 million Los Angeles mansion and commercial real estate holdings worth more than $20 million.
Methodology:
To estimate how much California billionaires would have to pay under the proposed wealth tax, Forbes applied a 5% tax on the net value of each person’s publicly traded stock, private company holdings and personal assets, including investment portfolios, art collections and yachts. We did not apply the wealth tax to personal real estate holdings, per the language of the proposed bill, but did tax the net value of commercial and investment property. We based our analysis on net worths as of January 11, 2026.
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