No matter how many jurisdictions discover the hard way that wealth taxes backfire, in California an initiative is collecting signatures to put a ‘one-time’ (ha!) 5 per cent tax on the net worth of the state’s roughly 200 billionaires on November’s ballot. Hey, those guys are rich. They won’t even notice.

But the funny thing about people and money is that even folks with lots like to keep it. The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act is slyly retroactive, a variety of pre-crime legislation – applying to anyone resident in California on 1 January this year, looping a bungee cord around the ankles of would-be absconders. Thus billionaires such as Peter Thiel scrambled to establish a presence in a lower tax state before midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Everything you fancy you ‘own’ belongs to the state and all that you regard as ‘yours’ you’re merely renting

Yet changing state tax domicile in the US involves more than packing up a U-Haul and spending 183 1 days of the year elsewhere. California’s Franchise Tax Board hounds any fugitive who might have left his heart in San Francisco. Where does your pet live? Have you cancelled your CrossFit membership? They scour credit card bills for CA-based charges. (New York goes one better -– having once won a court case by proving a former resident hadn’t truly moved to Florida because her husband was buried in NY. Ergo, even leaving behind a corpse will anchor you to the high tax rates of the Empire State.)

I had a taste of California’s terrier-like tenacity regarding tax........

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