American billionaire Max Levchin, worth $2.3 billion, may quit California over 5% wealth tax

American billionaire Max Levchin, the co-founder and chief executive officer of buy now, pay later lender Affirm, said he would probably leave California if voters approve a proposed one-time tax on the state’s billionaires on Tuesday.

In an interview with Bloomberg published on Monday, Levchin, who also co-founded PayPal, said he loved California but opposed the measure. He called himself “unabashedly against this particular tax,” Forbes reported.

Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% levy on the net worth of billionaires who were legal residents of California on Jan. 1, 2026, payable over five years. The measure was drawn up by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the state’s largest health care worker union, and its backers say the money will mainly cover health care costs.

Levchin’s main objection is what he described as forced divestiture from illiquid assets. He said he worried he would have to sell stock to pay the levy, a concern shared by founders who fear losing voting control of their companies. He also warned that the tax could have a chilling effect on Silicon Valley founders and push more companies out of the state.

Supporters see it differently. Proponents are targeting about $100 billion in revenue over five years, Fortune reported. A working paper by economists Jasper Boll, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, estimated that California billionaires’ wealth reached $2.3 trillion by mid-2026 and that they pay a small share of it in state income tax.

Critics, by contrast, question the numbers. Stanford researchers Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh estimated the tax would collect $28 billion to $36 billion while wiping out billions in annual income tax from wealthy residents who leave. More than 100 economists, including four Nobel laureates, also signed an open letter warning that parts of the measure may be illegal.

Several billionaires who oppose the tax left California before the Jan. 1 cutoff, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to Forbes. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreed a stock split with his company’s board that would let him sell nonvoting shares to pay the tax without losing voting power. Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey has said he opposes the tax but will stay, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in January that he was comfortable paying it.

It is unclear whether the measure will pass, and several recent polls have shown California voters opposing it, Forbes reported.

Forbes estimates Levchin’s net worth at $2.3 billion. He co-founded Affirm in 2012, and the company is based in San Francisco. He is part of the so-called PayPal Mafia, the group of PayPal co-founders and early staff that includes fellow billionaires Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman.

Earlier this year, Levchin gave $1 million to a coalition backing housing reform in California, one of several large donations from tech billionaires ahead of the vote, Business Insider reported.