Bipartisan coalition fights California’s ‘Job Creator’ tax
by Kerry Picket · The Washington TimesA billionaire wealth tax on the California ballot is polling ahead by 6 points, and a bipartisan coalition of business leaders and politicians is warning it could force the state’s tech giants and other job creators out of the state.
Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on approximately 200 billionaires in California. Labor unions are pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars to get voters to pass it.
Opponents have pushed back with their own financial and top Democratic political muscle, including backing by the state’s top Democrat: Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The coalition organized under the banner “Building a Better California” and raised upward of $150 million, said Aidan Chao, chairman of the Los Angeles County Taxpayers Association, a coalition member.
“Fundraising is always a challenge. However, we are very grateful to our partners and friends in Silicon Valley for their generous support,” he told The Advocates. “They recognize that this is an existential problem to the industry and the home of the industry that they have built up for so many decades.”
Mr. Chao described Prop 40 as a “killer of California’s economic future” that will drive out of state “Silicon Valley, our innovators, our job creators.”
The coalition has a counter-message for the tax-the-rich mantra behind Prop 40.
Advertisement Advertisement
“They call the billionaires tax a tax on ultra-high net worth billionaire individuals that are all evil,” Mr. Chao said.
“Essentially, we’re going to present it as an everyone tax.”
Push is on for a national standard for recycled plastic
A Fairfax-based conservative organization is throwing its weight behind legislation in Congress aimed at loosening regulations on plastic recycling.
The group, Frontiers of Freedom, argues that outdated rules are blocking market-driven solutions and dragging on economic growth. It is urging lawmakers to pass the bipartisan Recycled Materials Attribution Act, which was introduced earlier in the year by Rep. Nick Langworthy, New York Republican.
Advertisement Advertisement
The bill would establish uniform national standards for recycled content and recycling marketing claims, replacing various and conflicting state laws with a single national framework under the Federal Trade Commission.
“It’s an act about essentially making it easier to recycle plastic, changing some of the rules, because plastic’s becoming more and more important. And yet we have kind of past rules that have shut it down a bit,” Frontiers of Freedom Institute president George Landrith told The Advocates.
TASK Act promises major IRS overhaul
A bipartisan bill to make sweeping changes at the IRS has been quietly moving through Congress and, supporters say, would trigger the most significant overhaul of the tax agency in nearly three decades.
Advertisement Advertisement
The Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act, known as the TASK Act, passed out of the Senate Finance Committee with near-unanimous support, and portions of the bill have already passed the House in piecemeal form.
The legislation aims to improve customer service, simplify tax rules for U.S. taxpayers living abroad and strengthen taxpayers’ appeal rights.
National Taxpayers Union is leading a coalition supporting the bill and prodding lawmakers to take up the legislation in the upcoming lame-duck session.
Brandon Arnold, executive vice president of NTU, told The Advocates that the bill “would be the most consequential IRS reform package since the mid-90s.”
Advertisement Advertisement
The last major overhaul of the IRS was in 1998, which did away with the agency’s old geographic structure and created four taxpayer-specific divisions.
“Now it’s just a matter of figuring out a way to reconcile different approaches from the House and Senate and hopefully land the plane during the lame duck session,” Mr. Arnold said.
Chamber applauds SEC’s tokenized stock trading exemption
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce got behind the Securities and Exchange Commission’s newly released Innovation Exemption, a five-year conditional order allowing the on-chain secondary trading of some tokenized U.S. stocks.
Advertisement Advertisement
This is the first real, legal green light in the U.S. for trading stocks through cryptocurrency, something that has mostly happened overseas or was in a vague legal territory until now.
The SEC’s move came two days after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, which was crypto’s most consequential push to date for regulatory certainty.
The temporary exemption now positions companies such as Coinbase, Robinhood and Circle, which are already involved in crypto infrastructure, to build or run tokenized trading platforms.
The SEC’s exemption has a few exceptions, including only applying to stocks listed on major exchanges. Companies whose stock gets tokenized are also required to get advance notice, and they can object and prevent the tokenization.
“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce appreciates the SEC’s commitment to digital asset innovation, representing one of the most significant changes to the U.S. capital markets system,” said Mike Flood, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.
The Chamber is urging the agency to “proceed in an open, collaborative, and deliberative manner, as we will be carefully monitoring the progress of and commenting on its newly released Innovation Exemption,” he said.
• The Advocates column is a weekly look at the political action players who drive the debate and shape policy outcomes in Washington. Send tips to theadvocates@washingtontimes.com. Click here to receive The Advocates in your inbox each week.
Contact the author
Kerry Picket
Follow author updates Follow Click to follow. Manage followed authors