California Tax Pulse

What happens when a California executive leaves the state and later receives a multimillion-dollar severance payment tied to the job he actually performed in California? According to the California Office of Tax Appeals, the answer may depend less on where he worked before leaving and more on where his contract required him to work in the future.

The California Billionaire Tax Act is officially on the November ballot. Late last month, California's Secretary of State certified the measure after proponents submitted well over double the required signatures. Backroom negotiations between Governor Newsom and the union backing the initiative, SEIU-UHW (i.e., United Healthcare Workers West), collapsed at the eleventh hour, and the measure is now headed to voters on November 3, 2026.

The California Billionaire tax is no longer theoretical; it’s now a ballot fight.

Late last month, proponents of California’s “Billionaire Tax Act” announced they had collected well over the number of signatures required to qualify the measure for the November 2026 ballot. Reports indicate more than 1.5 million signatures were gathered, nearly double the 875,000 valid signatures required under California’s initiative process to qualify for the ballot. In California, the signature-gathering phase is often considered the real gatekeeper to the passing of new ballot measures. And this proposal cleared the first hurdle in convincing fashion.