A trillion dollars of wealth has left California because of the threat of a billionaire tax.
Posted by The Dan Bongino Show, Checked
- Sources
- 1 contradict4 context
- Said
- 1 time·
- Confidence
- 55%
The Dan Bongino ShowOct 16, 2026
No source says a trillion dollars of wealth has left California. The only departure tally in the sources is Telegraph's figure of about $540bn for seven billionaires believed to have left, roughly half the claimed amount, and that is an opinion piece.
What was said
… implementation clause, which means that if it is voted through on the ballot in that now and is implemented at the end of the year, which is when it goes into practice, it actually goes back to the start of 2026. So people knew that at the end of last year. As a result, you've had, by some estimate, a trillion dollars of wealth has already left California as the targets of this tax moved to Florida, to Texas, to Tennessee. That means we've even if the tax, even if this insane thing doesn't pass, we've already lost tens of billions of dollars of tax revenue with the people and the businesses who've left. So that's already happened, just the threat of it. …
The Dan Bongino Show · · from the transcriptPost →What we found
Contradicts. The Telegraph opinion piece puts the wealth of seven billionaires believed to have left California at some $540bn, about half the claimed trillion.[1]
Context. Business Insider and the Stanford economists (Jaros and Rauh) identify seven billionaires reported to have left before the January 1, 2026 residency cutoff, but give no total wealth figure for them.[3][4]
Context. California's billionaires collectively hold about $2.3 trillion, per the measure's authors and Rauh's analysis, so a trillion dollars of departures would be a large share of the total, and no source reports that.[4][5]
Context. Coverage ties departures to the proposed tax: Reuters-style reporting and the Stanford study say billionaires moved to avoid the residency deadline, which supports the causal link but not the dollar magnitude.[2][4]
Sources
5 sources: 4 not rated, 1 tier 2
- 1California's billionaire tax will only speed the state's declinetelegraph.co.uk · not rated · cited for: contradicts
- 2California wealth tax initiative to set example for futurenytimes.com · tier 2 · cited for: context
- 3Billionaire Flight Could Cost California More Than Wealth Tax Makesbusinessinsider.com · not rated · cited for: context
- 4Two economists studied California's billionaire tax. They reached wildly different conclusionswgcu.org · not rated · cited for: context
- 5California voters will pay price if 'billionaire tax' passesrmb.reuters.com · not rated · cited for: context
Where this claim was made
Said in 1 published post
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