Bammie Marks

this all becomes easier to understand once you realize we're not paying taxes for public infrastructure or services, we're paying taxes to increase the number of bureaucrats who vote for the democratic party

Billionaires cannot - cannot - be the primary spokespeople against the Billionaire Tax Act Billionaire tweets are to the left what liberal tears are to the right, if that makes sense A different strategy is needed

It's no accident that the California wealth tax is framed as an excise tax on "the activity of sustaining excessive accumulations of wealth." The rationale is also one reason why people may be able to avoid the tax by leaving even though we're past the January 1 residency date. Retroactive residency requirements can be challenged on multiple fronts. Courts typically allow some retroactivity in tax law, though usually it must be within the same year. This initiative has anti-avoidance rules using an October 2025 date, which already exceeds that. It's also retroactive for residency while using a date a year apart (December 31, 2026) for valuation and assessment of tax, which will draw legal scrutiny. But another key consideration: the tax lacks any proportionality or fair apportionment. Residency is based on a one-day snapshot, and taxable net worth is based on a different one-day snapshot that is used even if the taxpayer is no longer a resident at that time. Even if retroactivity survived judicial scrutiny, these one-day snapshots aren't typically how either property or income taxes work. (And fundamentally, a wealth tax is a property tax, though on an absurdly large base.) They'd have to be allocated or apportioned, so someone who left in March wouldn't be taxed for a full year's worth, and certainly not on wealth accumulated after. The wealth tax initiative tries to get around any traditional limits, including those that may be required by the U.S. Constitution, by designing this as an excise tax not on the wealth itself, but on "the activity of sustaining" that accumulation. Courts usually care about substance over form, so just because the initiative calls itself one thing does not mean that courts won't conclude it's something else. Drafters recognized that courts may reject the dates they set in the initiative, which is why they include language asking courts to construe references to the "tax obligation date" and the "valuation date" to refer to different, later dates of the court's choosing, or even to punt the whole wealth tax and all its dates for a year, if they conclude it necessary for the wealth tax to survive. The possibility that courts would, instead of striking the law, set new dates or postpone implementation is yet another reason why affected taxpayers might move later this year if the initiative appears to have legs. Billionaires who left California by December 31st took the safest course of action if the goal was to avoid getting caught up in the proposed wealth tax, but those still in California have multiple grounds (what I've outlined here is certainly not exhaustive) to believe that leaving the state sometime later in 2026 could still be meaningful under the legal challenges that are certain to come if the initiative passes.