Did 'billionaires tax' force Google co-founder Larry Page to move businesses out of California?

Billionaire Larry Page is moving his businesses out of California—the place where he and Sergey Brin set up tech giant Google almost 30 years ago, after initial funding.

This end to Page's decades-long relationship with the US state involves not just his family office, but also several other entities.

At the heart of this big change is a proposed wealth tax called the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, as per which residents whose net worth exceeded $1 billion would be taxed up to 5 per cent of their assets, while those with at least $20 billion in assets would face a one-time tax of $1 billion.

If the proposal—applicable from January 1, 2026 onwards—were approved, Page would have had to pay up roughly $14.8 billion in tax ($13.8 billion for the net-worth tax and $1 billion as the one-time tax).

According to a Business Insider report, Page's filings showed that his family office, Koop, was among the entities he had shifted to Delaware, in addition to Flu Lab LLC (which funds his influenza research) to Nevada, One Aero (his flying car venture) to Florida, and Dynatomics, LLC (an AI-powered aerospace startup) to Texas.

The report added that the world's second richest person—with a net worth of $270 billion, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—had also left the state, but did not say if he would return, citing sources in the know.

The move may have a similar impact on Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, who might also reduce ties with California, as well as Social Capital (a venture capital firm) CEO Chamath Palihapitiya.

If passed, the wealth tax could see Thiel pay about $2.35 billion and Palihapitiya pay roughly $60 million.

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU UHW), a healthcare union that proposed the bill, the move could generate up to $100 billion from 200 billionaires in the state.

It added that about 90 per cent of these tax revenues would be put into healthcare, while 10 per cent would be used for food assistance and education-related programmes—which it claimed would offset the loss of billions in federal and state funding for healthcare in the state.

However, several billionaires in California have attacked the move, warning of the outflow of the ultra-rich from the state, and its wider consequences.

"The inevitable outcome will be an exodus of the state’s most talented entrepreneurs who can and will choose to build their companies in less regressive states ... The tax burden, then, will fall to the middle class," Palihapitiya had said.