California Lawmakers Want Wealth Tax That Will Follow Taxpayers When They Inevitably Move to Cheaper States

California State Capitol Building

As people leave the State of California in record numbers, Progressive lawmakers in that state are moving ahead with plans to enact a wealth tax that will tax a person’s net worth and even follow them out of state should they move.

Many businesses and wealthy executives are leaving the State of California because of an overreaching tax code that is bleeding the states population of their ability to accrue wealth. But that’s not stopping some state lawmakers from supporting a wealth tax proposal, even as a growing number of Californians are calling for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), to be recalled.

The California legislature left the door open last session to enact a wealth tax proposal that would apply up to a 0.4 percent tax on the amount of a state resident’s net worth over $30 million dollars.

The bill, AB 2088, included wording that would make an individual or corporation who spent more than 60 days in California in any given year subject to some level of the wealth tax.

The degree to which a person’s wealth would be subject to the tax would be determined by the amount of time he or she spent in the state during the prior ten years.

And there would be no escaping the revenue generated by existing in California. Even leaving the state would not free an individual of the Tax burden. Under the proposed tax law, anyone who would have been subject to the tax in the preceding ten years would still be subject to some level of the tax for up to 10 years, even if not a California state resident.

State Senate Minority Leader Shannon Grove (R), said in an interview that even though the proposal failed in the last legislature, it “is coming back this year,” because the legislators adjourned without advancing the legislation.

Grove said state Democrats will “try to say that if you generate any revenue in the state…that they can track you down in whatever other state you go to and they can tax you California state taxes for ten years after you leave.”