Matt Mahan

People with very high net worths moving their assets and their primary residence out of the country or out of the state.

The other is to assess people's wealth is not a trivial thing.

You actually need to have an army of assessors go out and go through people's belongings and figure out what are all these things worth.

value them and then tax them.

And there's a lot of distortionary effects.

I just think it's likely to backfire.

It's going to be very costly.

And ultimately, I think it's the middle class that's going to be left holding the bag.

Yeah.

And that's not just me.

The legislative analyst office, the independent policy shop in Sacramento says that we've probably already taken $10 billion a year off of our future revenues based on the capital that's already left the state.

Well, that's why I point to those other two reforms that I think make a lot more sense.

One is if he's borrowing against those unrealized gains, there should be a cutoff at which point it's considered realized and you can't just endlessly borrow against your unrealized assets.

I think that's a way smarter way to do it that's less distortionary.

And I mean, really, ideally, that would be a federal policy.

The other is inheritance.

The best wealth tax is a...

one-time inheritance tax when you pass things on.

And if you don't want to actually force people to sell assets because it's a family business or a farm, that's fine.

But don't rebase the value of it at market rate at the moment the person dies.