It’s election season! Time to start exposing hilariously deceptive political crap from billionaires!

What is this little team of billionaires up to?

(governing.com) “The group is backing three ballot initiatives — one designed to block the billionaire tax outright and two that could undercut it.

• The first, titled the Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act, would prohibit new state personal property taxes. If both that measure and the billionaire tax passed, the one receiving the most votes would take effect under state law, effectively canceling out the other, said Shaun Bowler, a political science professor at UC Riverside.

The other two initiatives could complicate or undermine the tax if voters approved it.

• One proposal, called the Improving Transparency, Effectiveness & Efficiency in California Government Act, would require audits of programs funded by new state special taxes.
• Another, titled the Protect Schools and Taxpayers Act, would require new taxes to comply with existing school-funding rules. That requirement could send a large chunk of the billionaire tax’s projected $100 billion revenue to schools instead of the health care programs the union hopes to fund.

Taken together, the measures appear to be “spoiler propositions” meant to weaken the tax or force legal challenges if voters approve it, Bowler said.”

Will billionaires do what Newsom is afraid they’ll do?

(Calmatters) “In a study with the Treasury Department in 2016, looking more broadly at the consequences of progressive taxes, the researchers found that millionaire tax flight did occur but only in the margins. According to the study, a 10% increase in the top tax rate, for example, would cause a 1% drop in the millionaire population. 

“These people are just very embedded in the places where they’ve built their careers, and have a lot of ties to where they live and work. It’s costly to give those up,” Young said. “So it’s one thing to say, ‘I’m moving to Texas.’ But a lot of people, when it comes down to making that move, they don’t want to do it.”

In a recent analysis for Forbes, economist Teresa Ghilarducci wrote that wealthy taxpayers are more likely to scuttle if the levy is high, permanent and easy to avoid. In terms of public finance theory, the California health care workers union may have struck the right balance.

“A recurring tax can change lifetime planning and influence where people live,” Ghilarducci wrote. “A one-time tax likely does not.”…

…California’s estimated 200 billionaires are likely also sidestepping the tax system, which means there are loopholes lawmakers could close. In 2021, ProPublica obtained a trove of IRS files and uncovered how the country’s richest people manipulate the tax code to accrue tens of billions of dollars in wealth every year while giving a fraction to the government. 

Instead of paying income taxes, they keep their paychecks artificially lower and make most of their money through capital gains and the dividends on their investments. Then they make large charitable donations and use other tax-saving measures at an outrageous scale to pay even less. “Buy, borrow, die” is a popular strategy.

Thiel, for example, used investment tricks and tax law changes — that could only be exploited by the ultrawealthy — to turn a Roth IRA account into a tax shelter worth $5 billion, ProPublica found. He won’t have to pay a dime in taxes, assuming he withdraws next year when he turns 60.”