189 CA Billionaires Face 'Minimum Tax' In Biden's Proposed Plan

CALIFORNIA — Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and other wealthy Golden State residents could pay 20 percent more in taxes under a “Billionaire Minimum Tax” proposed in President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposal.

The Biden administration is asking Congress to approve the proposal, part of its efforts to reduce the federal deficit over the next decade while at the same time funding new spending. The proposed tax on the ultra-wealthy would affect fewer than 1 percent of Americans, but “eliminates the inefficient sheltering of income for decades or generations,” the White House said Monday at a news conference.

Under the proposal, households worth more than $100 million would pay at least 20 percent in taxes on both income and “unrealized gains,” or the increase in an unsold investment’s value. Many wealthy people hold onto these investments for decades, meaning they’re never taxed, the administration said.

The tax would apply only to the top one-hundredth of 1 percent of Americans, Biden said at a news conference, but would raise “$360 billion that can be used to lower costs for families and cut the deficit.”

Among those likely affected would be the following California residents with a place on the Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires ranking:

• Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook, whose net worth was $97 billion as of the close of business Monday;
• Larry Page, Google, whose net worth was $91.5 billion as of the close of business Monday;
• Sergey Brin, Google, whose net worth was $89 billion as of the close of business Monday;

“Now, I’m a capitalist, but … if you make a billion bucks, great,” Biden said. “Just pay your fair share. Pay a little bit.

“A firefighter and a teacher pay more than double — double the tax rate that a billionaire pays. That’s not right. That’s not fair.”

The proposed policy is “extremely nuanced,” according to an Associated Press explainer. It would allow wealthy households to spread some payments of their unrealized gains over nine years, and for five years on new income going forward. In effect, the AP explained, the payments are a prepayment on tax obligations they will owe when the investments are sold.

The proposal could be met with resistance by moderate Democrats, including Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, but it gives Democrats a talking point as inflation reaches a 40-year high. At the same time, for Republicans who oppose it, it creates a political liability of appearing to side with multibillionaires.

In California, lawmakers were pushing for a tax on "extreme wealth" last month which would raise taxes on households worth $50 million. The proposal would apply a 1 percent tax on those with a net worth of at least $50 million and a 1.5 percent tax on those worth more than $1 billion.

"There’s a whole other category of wealth where you just own things and can leverage more wealth out of your existing wealth and we’ve seen how that can be evaded,” Assembly Member Alex Lee (D-San Jose) told the Los Angeles Times in February. “We want the obscenely ultra rich to be paying their fair share.”

Last year, ProPublica published a bombshell report based on unreleased IRS files that showed multibillionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Rupert Murdoch paid very little or sometimes nothing at all in income taxes.

Here are 28 of California's richest residents:

1. No. 3: Mark Zuckerberg (37), $134.5 billion from Facebook, META; Lives in Palo Alto
2. No. 5: Larry Page (48), $123 billion from Google; Lives in Palo Alto
3. No. 6: Sergey Brin (48), $118.5 billion from Google; Lives in Atherton
4. No. 29: Dustin Moskovitz (37), $24.1 billion from Facebook; Lives in San Francisco
5. No. 30: Eric Schmidt (66), $23.9 billion from Google; Lives in Atherton
6. No. 33: Laurene Powell Jobs and family (57), $22.1 billion from Apple, Disney; Lives in Los Altos
7. No. 34: Jensen Huang (58), $21.3 billion from semiconductors; Lives in San Jose
8. No. 38: Robert Pera (43), $19 billion from wireless networking gear; Lives in San Francisco
9. No. 46: Donald Bren (89), $16.2 billion from Irvine Co. real estate; Lives in Newport Beach
10. No. 51: John Doerr (70), $15.2 billion from venture capital; Lives in Woodside
11. No. 51: Bobby Murphy (33), $15.2 billion from Snapchat; Lives in Venice
12. No. 53: Jack Dorsey (44), $14.9 billion from Twitter, Square; Lives in San Francisco
13. No. 54: Eric Yuan and family (51), $14.5 billion from Zoom Video Communications; Lives in Santa Clara
14. No. 55: Evan Spiegel (31), $13.8 billion from Snapchat; Lives in Los Angeles
15. No. 57: Brian Chesky (40), $12.5 billion from Airbnb; Lives in San Francisco
16. No. 60: Brian Armstrong (38), $11.5 billion from cryptocurrency; Lives in San Francisco
17. No. 60: Charles Schwab (84), $11.5 billion from discount brokerage; Lives in Woodside
18. No. 65: Jan Koum (45), $10.9 billion from WhatsApp; Lives in Atherton
19. No. 66: Joe Gebbia (40), $10.8 billion from Airbnb; Lives in San Francisco
20. No. 66: Gordon Moore (92), $10.8 billion from Intel; Lives in Woodside
21. No. 71: David Geffen (78), $10.5 billion from movies, record labels; Lives in Beverly Hills
22. No. 74: Marc Benioff (57), $10.2 billion from business software; Lives in San Francisco
23. No. 75: Steven Rales (70), $10.1 billion from manufacturing; Lives in Santa Barbara
24. No. 76: Nathan Blecharczyk (38), $10 billion from Airbnb; Lives in San Francisco
25. No. 88: George Roberts (78), $9 billion from private equity; Lives in Atherton
26. No. 89: Patrick Soon-Shiong (69), $8.9 billion from pharmaceuticals; Lives in Los Angeles
27. No. 92: Vinod Khosla (66), $8.6 billion from venture capital; Lives in Portola Valley
28. No. 98: Jack Dangermond (76), $8.4 billion from mapping software; Lives in Redlands

The Associated Press contributed reporting.