Meet the California multimillionaires demanding the billionaire tax become law

Stand back, plebs! We’ve got a wealth-off.The increasingly cantankerous fight over California’s proposed billionaire tax is now pitting the .01% against the .001%, as a group of multimillionaires call out their even richer counterparts for not paying more taxes.Disney scion Tim Disney, Men’s Wearhouse founder George Zimmer and former San Francisco congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti — a mere centimillionaire as one of the founding engineers of Stripe — are among more than 40 wealthy Californians who signed an open letter urging voters to approve Proposition 40, a proposed one-time tax on the state’s billionaires.

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By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Never miss a story “As multimillionaires, we’re willing to do our part,” the letter says.

“It’s past time for billionaires — our thousand millionaire cousins — to do theirs.”The letter by Patriotic Millionaires and Tax the Ultra-Rich Now supports a 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires who lived in California as of Jan.1, 2026.

Others who signed on include documentary filmmaker Matthew Cooke and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier.Chakrabarti has been particularly pointed in defending the labor-sponsored wealth tax, dismissing warnings that it would send California’s richest residents fleeing for other states.“I think the disappointing thing is how few of the people who have made their wealth because of everything California has given them are willing to do the bare minimum to keep 3.4 million people from losing Medicaid,” Chakrabarti told The California Post in a text message.He added that the top opponents of the billionaire tax — such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has dropped more than $100 million, and ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has dropped roughly $40 million — won’t eve...