Advertisement“Over the last 30 years, we’ve seen a dozen European countries pursue national-level wealth taxes,” Mahan said. “If you understand the actual lessons of history, you understand that this bill is more like the successful Swiss and Spanish wealth taxes,” Galle said. In a 2018 report on net wealth taxes, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found that European repeals were often driven by “efficiency and administrative concerns and by the observation that net wealth taxes have frequently failed to meet their redistributive goals.”“The revenues collected from net wealth taxes have also, with a few exceptions, been very low,” it found. AdvertisementCritics and skeptics of the California proposal say they expect California to run into all the same problems. San José Mayor Matt Mahan, who might run for governor, opposes the proposed tax on California billionaires.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 26, 2026 15:31 UTC