Palmer Luckey has been a California billionaire since he was 21 years old, when he sold his first company, virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR, to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. His current company, defense tech firm Anduril, is headquartered in in Costa Mesa, California, not far from Long Beach, where Luckey grew up. And Anduril is worth far more.
It was last valued at $61 billion. While Luckey clearly despises the proposed California billionaire wealth tax, a ballot measure that would tax the net worth of the state’s richest residents, he said he’s not leaving California over it. It’s causing a lot of people to run who I don’t want to be running.
It’s going to cause companies that I work with to leave the state, which is a problem for me. As of right now, though, I’m not running. I think California is something special.
I want to fight for California,” Luckey said during an invite-only press conference on Monday. He added that he’s felt pressure from other billionaires to declare his intention to leave. You can’t enable these really bad policies.
If you stay and if you don’t leave, it’s going to show them that there’s no consequences.’ I empathize with that argument, but it’s not one that I’m going to participate in right now because I still believe that we can fix things.” Luckey added that it’s not the idea of paying taxes that he takes issue with, but that the bill is sponsored by specific union, a unit of the United Healthcare Workers, that wants to use the money the tax would raise “for their uses,” he said. The measure’s sponsors say the money will be used for “health care, education, and food assistance” programs in the state, and they specifically name Medi-Cal, California’s health coverage program for low-income residents. Another issue is for Luckey, as for others, is how the proposal would assess the tax owed, as well as the penalties.
It would tax “wealth” including unrealized assets that haven’t been sold, and illiquid assets that are hard to turn into cash. And penalties can be assessed as high as 40%. That’s not even the real problem.
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