The ultra-rich are spending one million dollars a day fighting California’s proposed billionaire tax

California's proposed billionaire tax faces fierce opposition from tech billionaires, with spending reaching $1m a day.

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Tech billionaires have raised more than $340m to defeat Prop 40, a one-time 5% wealth tax that will fund healthcare and education in California. The campaign they're funding is spending more than $1m a day to defeat the measure, according to state financial disclosures. Californians will vote on the ballot measure, Proposition 40, in early November.

The measure has divided Democrats in the state, with some giving enthusiastic support and others rejecting the proposal because it's just a one-time levy and the bulk of it would only fund certain healthcare programs. The state's major unions and progressive politicians like the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and California congressman Ro Khanna back Prop 40. But both the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, as well as organizations like Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, a lobbying branch of the healthcare group, oppose it.

Among its fiercest critics, however, are the tech billionaires it would most directly apply to. The donors to the no campaign are a who's who of Silicon Valley, including the Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, crypto magnate Chris Larsen and several prominent venture capitalists. The biggest donor, by far, is the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has contributed at least $102m to fight the tax, according to campaign finance filings.

Recent polling on Prop 40 shows that it's favored to pass, but its lead has shrunk over the last few weeks as the opposition campaign has increased spending. A late-September poll by the University of California shows 45% of voters likely to vote yes on the tax with 42% voting no. Just a month earlier, the proposal enjoyed a 7% lead.