Steven Spielberg has said goodbye to Hollywood and joined the growing list of billionaires fleeing California ahead of a hefty new proposed wealth tax as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) remains committed to taxing the state into prosperity.
The Daily Mail reports the director bought a home in the iconic San Remo co-op in New York City overlooking Central Park.
Other high-net worth individuals such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have also fled the Golden State and more are tipped to follow in an effort to escape punitive taxation measures so warmly embraced by Newsom.
The outlet provides background to the new tax and its broad impact:
The much maligned proposal would see residents with a net worth of more than $1 billion pay a one-time tax worth five percent of their assets.
If the bill passes a vote due in November, it would retroactively affect billionaires living in the state beginning January 1, 2026, and would include stocks, art and intellectual property in the calculation.
The movement is an attempt to recoup funds for essential services, such as health care and education, funded by the taxpayer dollars from the state’s large population of billionaires.
Spielberg’s spokesperson said the primary reason for his Big Apple move was to be closer to family.
The San Remo, 145 Central Park West apartment building in Manhattan as seen from Central Park, New York City, USA. (Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, are considering buying a $200-million waterfront mansion in South Florida, the Wall Street Journal first reported earlier this month.
The property is located in Miami’s Indian Creek, a gated barrier island that is an alcove of the wealthy and the influential, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Representatives for Zuckerberg declined to comment.
If approved, the new tax would reportedly raise roughly $100 billion although no exact economic reasoning has been given for arriving at that figure.
Critics say it would simply drive the wealthy, their companies – and their dollars – out of the state, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Indeed, it was Britain’s wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill who famously argued against high taxation as a means of somehow making society “fairer,” stating:
“For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
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