A 23-year-old millionaire who had planned to move from Columbus, Ohio, to San Francisco says California's proposed billionaire wealth tax changed his mind.
Emil Barr, the founder of Flashpass, told Fortune he had signed a lease to relocate about a year ago. He said he reversed course after reviewing California's regulatory and tax environment, including Proposition 40, a Nov. 3 ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on qualifying billionaires who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026.
Barr said the tax would not apply to him under the current proposal, but he feared it could be the first step toward taxes on millionaires like him. 'I think it was less of a matter of immediate finances,' Barr told Fortune. He also pointed to what he described as California's 'anti-entrepreneurial' political rhetoric.
Flashpass builds technology that helps government agencies connect people with work, including people displaced by AI, Barr said. He moved to Columbus because Ohio was the first state to use the software. San Francisco initially appealed to him because it is closer to investors and AI companies, but he said the state's policy climate changed his view.
'I am not 100% sure I am going to stay in Ohio and keep building the business in Ohio,' Barr said. 'But I am 100% sure that I would not build a business in California.'
The proposal has become a broader fight over whether California should tax its largest fortunes to help pay for public services, or risk making the state less attractive to founders and capital. Fortune reported that most of the revenue from Proposition 40 would go toward healthcare.
The measure has drawn support from six Nobel Prize-winning economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Daron Acemoglu. In a September letter, they argued that the tax would be modest compared with billionaires' wealth gains and would help replace lost federal healthcare funding while supporting public services important to California's economic growth.
Opposition has also come from Gov. Gavin Newsom and Google cofounder Sergey Brin, who helped fund the anti-tax effort. On the other side, Debru Carthan, vice president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, rejected concerns that the proposal would drive away wealthy residents or investment. The campaign says the tax would help replace roughly $100 billion in federal healthcare funding it expects California to lose over five years.
The numbers come first: this fight is not just about billionaires. It is about whether California wants to reward risk-taking and accumulation, or whether the state will keep reaching deeper into private wealth when the political class needs more revenue. Capital rewards clear rules. When lawmakers turn tax policy into a moving target, entrepreneurs notice, and some simply take their plans elsewhere.
