Vote No on the Measure That Could Cancel California's Billionaire Tax

The Legislative Analyst's Office says Prop. 41 could keep Prop. 40 from becoming law if 41 draws more yes votes.

If you're planning to vote yes on Proposition 40, California's billionaire tax for healthcare, Proposition 41 could quietly undo your vote a few lines down the same ballot.

That isn't my spin. It's the conclusion of the Legislative Analyst's Office, the Legislature's nonpartisan budget referee, as the Los Angeles Times reported in its voter guide. Prop. 41 says no new state tax can keep its money outside the spending cap voters already approved, and that's exactly where it runs into Prop. 40. If 41 gets more yes votes than 40, the analyst says, the billionaire tax could be stopped from becoming law.

So a yes on 40 means little unless you also vote no on 41.

Prop. 41 doesn't sell itself that way. Its formal name is the Improving Transparency, Effectiveness and Efficiency in California Government Act, and its backers include the California Taxpayers Assn., the California Society of Certified Public Accountants and the CalAsian Chamber of Commerce. They pitch it as a cure for waste, and its website promises the state will "stop funding failure and start funding successful outcomes."

The audit half deserves a fair hearing. Before a new special tax could reach voters, the state auditor would have to study the program it pays for and judge whether it's doing what it says. Special taxes passed after Jan. 1, 2026, would get reviewed again every four years. Plenty of voters would sign up for that, and I'd understand why.

Then comes the job the auditor is handed. Among the things to examine, according to the Times, is how to trim the program's costs by at least 10% every year. That isn't a referee checking whether the game was fair. It's a coach told before kickoff to bench a tenth of the roster.

And the spending-cap clause works like a tiebreaker voters never asked for. You can approve both measures and still lose the one you wanted, because 41 only has to outpoll it.

Now the money. Most of the cash supporting Prop. 41 has come from a committee called Building a Better California, according to secretary of state data cited by the Times. Its top contributors include Google co-founder Sergey Brin, former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and John Doerr, chairman of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.

I won't tell you what's in anyone's heart, because the filings don't say. My argument rests on two published facts: what the analyst concluded, and that a committee bankrolled by Silicon Valley's biggest names is paying for the measure that could switch off a tax on billionaires.

The other side has skin in this too. The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the healthcare union behind Prop. 40, opposes 41. Its chief of staff, Suzanne Jimenez, wrote in the ballot arguments that the measure was "created to trick voters like you into making a billionaire tax impossible to enforce."

Supporters would answer that checking whether a tax works is good government whoever pays for the check. They'd add that billionaires can pack up and leave the state, so a little caution is wise.

Both points have answers. Audits don't need the spending-cap clause riding along with them; that clause is the piece the analyst says reaches Prop. 40. And if you think the billionaire tax will chase its targets out of California, that's a reason to vote no on 40 itself, out loud, on the merits. Prop. 41 lets that fight get settled by which measure draws more votes instead.

Election day is Nov. 3, 2026. Vote on the billionaire tax however you like. Then vote no on 41, so your answer on 40 is the one that counts.

Source: latimes.com, retrieved October 1, 2026.