Stripe’s Patrick Collison on front line of billionaires’ war against wealth tax

Every Tuesday for the last few months, two dozen of the world’s richest people or their advisers hop on to a conference call and plan for war.

The war is against a proposed tax, but not just any tax. It is against a “wealth tax” on California billionaires, one that Silicon Valley’s most affluent see as an existential threat that could usher in a new way of attacking them.

In confidential memos, WhatsApp and Signal chats and conference calls, opponents are banding together to battle back. And prominent among them is Stripe cofounder Patrick Collison.

The calls are organised by Building a Better California, a non-profit started this year to fight Proposition 40, the ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5 per cent tax on about 200 residents of the state who have more than $1 billion in assets, excluding property, pensions and retirement accounts.

Ninety per cent of the funds raised will go to public healthcare, with the rest split between education and food programmes.

On Tuesday, when they go to the polls in the congressional midterm elections, California voters will also vote on the measure.

Eighty or so donors have provided more than $333 million to Building a Better California, state records show, making it among the best-funded political efforts in California history. The donor list is a who’s who of tech celebrities: Google co-founder Sergey Brin; former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt; Stripe chief executive Collison; legendary investor John Doerr.

“The effort to beat it is nothing short of an Avenger-level effort,” said Trevor Traina, a Silicon Valley investor who knows many of the billionaires socially but is not involved with the group. “Like the Avengers, this is not a homogenous group of people, but rather heroes of different stripes who share the same goal of protecting California. I, for one, pray they prevail.”

[ The rich are getting richer, so why no wealth tax?Opens in new window ]

Many are aware of how it looks. Fighting a billionaire tax as populist outrage grows over inequality requires finesse. In a recent memo circulated among donors and viewed by the New York Times, organisers stressed that other supporters – not the billionaires – must be “the ‘face’ of campaigns”.

“Our supporters have created companies, entirely new industries and hundreds of thousands of jobs here in California, and they want our state to remain the place where the future is built and where people can still afford to live, dream big and succeed,” said Abby Lunardini, a group spokesperson. She said the wealth tax would “permanently damage the state’s budget, tax base and economy”.

The effort to fight Proposition 40 began with Brin and has swollen to include a wide cross-section of Silicon Valley power brokers.

Doerr and Collison, or people who work on their political operations, have made many of the fundraising calls. They are Building a Better California’s third- and fourth-largest donors, shelling out $40 million and $33 million, respectively. Each declined to comment.

Doerr (75) is famous for having invested in Google and Amazon and leading the venture firm Kleiner Perkins before becoming its chairman in 2016. A long-time Democratic fundraiser, he has a history of political engagement in California, including squashing propositions he viewed as damaging to Silicon Valley’s ecosystem.

Collison, by contrast, is still learning the ropes. The 38-year-old Irish citizen prides himself on a bookish disposition, and has invested money and time into arcane policy topics such as housing reform and science funding streams.

The wealth tax fight is Collison’s most serious campaign engagement to date. The tax could be particularly disruptive to him because most of his net worth consists of stock in Stripe, his privately held payments company valued at $159 billion, which is harder to sell.

Collison has occasionally talked of his frustrations with the tax and tried to game out the politics of the ballot measure in private conversations, people who have spoken to him said.

Those dialling for dollars are presenting tech entrepreneurs with the option to donate stock that has appreciated in value, according to a donation form seen by the New York Times. That is appealing because the stockholder can avoid paying a capital gains tax on donated shares. The strategy has borne fruit: more than two-thirds of the money received by the group over the last six weeks has been in stock.

Backers have included venture capitalists from top firms such as Sequoia Capital, Coatue, General Catalyst and Benchmark, as well as founders of tech companies including Robinhood, Rippling, DoorDash, Reddit, Figma and Coinbase.

A spokesperson for Kleiner Perkins, which has donated $1 million to the group, said its donation reflected its belief that “California should be the place where the most ambitious people in the world choose to start and grow their companies.”

A half-dozen other donors said they gave out of frustration and believe the proposition is poorly written, is illegal, and will not, despite promises from its architects, be a “one-time” tax. Some donors are not even billionaires who would be affected by the tax, but oppose the measure on principle.

Others, such as Rippling chief Parker Conrad, argued on social media that the tax would unfairly hurt “unicorn” founders of valuable companies that have not yet sold or gone public, because it applies to illiquid assets such as private start-up stock.

Brin kicked off the Silicon Valley backlash in late 2025 when he moved his residence and businesses to Nevada to avoid the proposed tax. This year, he began working with the head of his family office, George Pavlov, and two political hands, lawyer Kurt Oneto and ballot expert Ned Wigglesworth, to beat the measure.

Competing efforts against the wealth tax sprouted but quickly petered out partly because of Brin’s credibility.

Most of the money raised has gone towards political ads. Over the summer, the group bought as much as $97 million of advertising time in California. Over half of that focused on the effort opposing Proposition 40, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.

Another third of the airtime has gone towards an effort supporting Proposition 42, a “countermeasure” on the ballot that the group stood up to effectively ban future wealth taxes. (Another ballot measure allied with the group, Proposition 41, has been de-prioritised.)

Even if Proposition 40 passes, the tax can be nullified if Proposition 42 passes with a higher percentage of the vote.

– This article originally appeared in The New York Times.