Ignore the Rich – Don’t Punish Success

In an unsurprising move from the interventionist state of California, a new tax proposal threatens to take an even larger share of wealth from the state’s wealthier inhabitants, and – even worse– the act would enforce ex post facto taxation against recent emigrants from the state. Despite state propaganda to the contrary, this won’t make anyone better off.

The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

Apparently to illustrate that the state of California has little interest in controlling its fiscal profligacy or in protecting the property rights of anyone who can be demonized as rich, a union-backed state ballot initiative titled “The Billionaire Tax Act” has been proposed.

It would not only be punitive, but far more so than generally reported, due to a largely overlooked detail that would count a share of stock with, say, 10 votes (one way large owners can maintain control of their creations), as being 10 shares of stock in calculating wealth (see Section 50303, 3C, of the text of the initiative). It would introduce a cornucopia of constitutional challenges and serious measurement and implementation issues, which have led most countries that have imposed wealth taxes to abandon them. It would also be retroactively applied to people who have abandoned residency in the “Golden (Goose) State,” provided they were residents at the beginning of this year, despite the fact that ex post facto taxation cannot possibly be fair to those taxed.