A California Wealth Tax Would Do Major Harm

Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, submitted his opinion of the harm a California wealth tax would bring in a recent, online article in the Daily Breeze.

Last week, a few ultra-progressive legislators and a radical public employee labor organization proposed a new wealth tax which they claim would raise approximately $22 billion a year annually. Although the tax would be imposed only on the super wealthy, its downstream consequences would be felt by all Californians no matter their income or bank balance.

Here’s what normal people should know about this proposal.

First, it would indeed be a tax on the wealth of some of the richest Californians. According to the proponents, the tax would be equal to 1% of a person’s “household wealth” if that person had wealth of $50 million or more. It would also grab 1.5% of wealth over $1 billion. According to the proponents, there are only 169 billionaires in California. Therefore, they argue, the vast majority of Californians would not feel the sting.

The tax hike proposal was introduced last week by Alex Lee, California’s youngest member of the Assembly. Lee is 25 years old and still lives with his mother in the San Francisco Bay area. The so-called “California Tax on Extreme Wealth” is also sponsored by California Federation of Teachers who, in addition to refusing to let its members go back to the classrooms, has never met a tax it didn’t like.

There are so many problems with this measure, it’s hard to know where to begin.

First, even for those who cry “eat the rich” the question is why do we want our state taxes to go even higher?
California already has the highest income tax rate in America, the highest state sales tax rate in America and the highest gas tax in America. And despite claims that Proposition 13 has resulted in low property taxes, that just isn’t true. California ranks 17th out of 50 states in per capita property tax collections.

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