I'll go further and say that the article's discussion of Prop 40 is an embarrassment to the author and the publication. Quoting paid right-wing agitprop against the Prop, while not mentioning the supporters explanation of why that agitprop is lies, is not what I expect from this outlet.

Steve Randy Waldman@interfluidity.com · 3d ago

I'm a huge @liberalcurrents.com fan, but not at all a fan of this piece by Cameron Cummins-Smith. For most of the piece it argues against strawmen, missing the point of wealth taxes — which is not, not at all, to "raise revenue". www.liberalcurrents.com/tax-the-weal...

California voters will weigh in on a one-time 5% wealth tax on the state's billionaires. Opponents of the plan continue to raise objections, many of which are tenuous and have already been addressed. itep.org/californias-...

California’s Prop 40: Responses to Common Objections

Proposition 40, California’s proposed billionaire tax, is a one-time 5 percent levy that addresses a significant one-time emergency, namely the cuts made to the healthcare system by the so-called “One...

itep.org

My convo with The New Yorker's incredibly professional & dedicated fact checker: IPADFC: "This says you're going to get $100 billion from just 200 people. How is that possible?" Me: "Well, the 200 people are worth > $2.2 trillion." IPADFC: <long pause> IPADFC: "Those are really enormous sums."

Was...was I just ricrolled by a statistics bot?

Daily Spurious Correlation 🤖 @dailycorrelation.bsky.social · last wk.

Votes for Democratic Senators in New Jersey correlates with Popularity of the 'never gonna give you up' meme (r=0.83)

This very fine & excellent conference comes to you courtesy of program co-chairs @katarzynabilicka.bsky.social, Kathy Michelmore, and yrs truly, aided of course by our program committee and the good folks on the NTA team. You will be sad if you miss it.

National Tax Association@natltax.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Registration is open for the 119th Annual Conference on Taxation! Join us in Pittsburgh for the premier conference on tax policy & public finance: you can expect illuminating sessions, powerful keynotes, and meaningful networking opportunities!💡 🔗https://nta.memberclicks.net/2026annualconference#/

Six Nobel laureate economists, including our chief economist @josephestiglitz.bsky.social and senior fellow @pkrugman.bsky.social, are backing California’s billionaire tax. They argue a vote in the state with more billionaires than any other could help kick-start wealth taxes nationwide.

Nobel economists throw support behind California billionaire tax

Progressive laureates say November ballot measure could ‘start reining in the power’ of ultra-wealthy

ft.com

This is obviously nuts but I do want to see states put a "place offsetting $580 bets on State U instead" button on their work requirement verification pages.

James Medlock@jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 2w ago

Republicans, in their infinite wisdom, left a big gambling loophole in the Medicaid work requirements. I'm no fan of the gambling industry, but if you are on Medicaid and struggling to deal with the work requirements, taking a $580 bet on both sides of an outcome is one way of getting around them.

This is obviously nuts but I do want to see states put a "place offsetting $580 bets on State U instead" button on their work requirement verification pages.

James Medlock@jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 2w ago

Republicans, in their infinite wisdom, left a big gambling loophole in the Medicaid work requirements. I'm no fan of the gambling industry, but if you are on Medicaid and struggling to deal with the work requirements, taking a $580 bet on both sides of an outcome is one way of getting around them.

There's still time to register for the @rooseveltinstitute.org #HotTaxFall event tomorrow! FT Tax Wonks: @bdgesq.bsky.social @samarthgupta.bsky.social @natekelly.bsky.social And other wonks: @elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social @suzmkahn.bsky.social

Whose Code Is It Anyway? Tax Reform as Democracy Reform

events.zoom.us

California's wealth tax would be a great gift for some of the country's richest people cepr.net/publications...

California’s Wealth Tax Is Not Perfect, But It’s Damn Good

Voters will soon decide whether to tax billionaires to pay for essential services. Do the arguments against this wealth tax add up?

cepr.net

I support this effort but hey! I am already using that name. rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/u...

TCI@tcifiscal.bsky.social · 4w ago

TCI’s updated Fair Share report looks at what several states are making possible by approving new or higher tax rates on million-dollar incomes. As federal cuts cloud Virginia's revenue outlook, a Fair Share tax could mean ongoing revenue and a fairer tax code. bit.ly/fair-share-tax-virginia

This claim that "illegal" activity by nonprofits allows the Admin to revoke their charitable status is itself unlawful, as I & nearly all the leading figures in nonprofit law explained in a reg comment last year. See here: www.insidehighered.com/sites/defaul... www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/b...

Trump Moves to Strip Tax Exemption From Schools That Aid Minority Students

The Treasury Department released rules that would prevent schools with race-based programs from qualifying for tax-exempt status, a threat to both higher education and other private schools.

nytimes.com

Oh, nice! I am the very first follower for my co-author @mcmungan.bsky.social, crim law expert and horse guy. (To be clear, he is a guy who likes horses, not some kind of centaur thingy).

IRS Investigations of Nonprofits: An Explainer www.icnl.org/our-work/us-... @icnl.bsky.social #nonprofitlaw

IRS Investigations of Nonprofits: An Explainer

This explainer describes tools that the IRS may use to investigate nonprofits and offers practical steps nonprofits can take to prepare for and respond to IRS scrutiny.

icnl.org

Now in print: Where are all these super-rich families hiding their money from the estate tax? How can we tax it anyway? Read the answer in an article that NBER President Jim Poterba himself calls "very interesting"! repository.law.upenn.edu/Documents/De...

Brian Galle@bdgesq.bsky.social · last yr.

New WP alert! Taxing Dynasties with @davidgamage.bsky.social and @azboblord.bsky.social (forthcoming U. Pa. L. Rev.) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Long summary thread incoming. 1/15

<kermit typing frantically at typewriter .gif>

Michael Mechanic@michaelmechanic.bsky.social · last mo.

Oh, this would be a very slippery slope, because there lots and lots of conservative nonprofits funding anti-democratic extremism and they could be targeted in the same way by another administration.

No loophole for dying with your fortune intact, either. If NYC is a local test case, this is the national blueprint. Read the full piece here: democracyjournal.org/magazine/81/...

The Right Way to Tax the Ultra-Rich

Taxing the accumulated wealth of America’s ultrarich should be a top tax-reform priority for the next administration. To be sure, there are other low-hanging tax-policy fruit, such as reversing…

democracyjournal.org

In New York City, property owners are pushing back hard on Mayor Zohran Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax: suing to block it and threatening to pull business from the city. A tax like this is one way progressives are trying to tax the rich.

Sobering story on the impact of federal cuts on CA's health system, and unfortunately the Becerra quotes are cringe at best. There is no plan except to watch insured workers pay an extra $30B per year. This is exactly the crisis Prop 40 was written for: $100B in revenue, 90% to reduce health costs.

NPR@npr.org · last mo.

The nation's uninsured rate hit a historical low when Xavier Becerra was health secretary. Now he wants to be California's next governor as Trump's actions have driven people off health insurance. n.pr/4wHvNrW

It's almost as if taxing billionaires were a wildly popular policy among democratic voters and they get mad at you when you try to sink the one serious policy effort to do that the country has going right now.

Poll Tracker 📊@polltracker.bsky.social · last mo.

How 2028 Democratic Primary Polling Has Shifted Since January 1, 2026 🟢Ossoff: +5 🟢Kelly: +4.1 🟢Harris: +2.4 🟢AOC: +1.5 🟢Buttigieg: +1.3 🟢Shapiro: +1.4 🔴Newsom: -10.8

Thought I could escape reading yet more from the ubiquitous @agranato42.bsky.social but now he's showing up in my basketball news feed, too. Does this guy sleep? www.nytimes.com/athletic/752...

It’s hard to separate this spending from the deeper problem of extreme wealth in our politics. Fortunes insulated from taxation are being used to fight efforts to make the rich pay their share. That’s the cycle we need to break. @bdgesq.bsky.social shows how: rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

Fun fact, this is not Ryan Grim's idea; it is how the California billionaire tax actually operates (although we drafted it to take notional equity stakes rather than actual shares to simplify corporate governance).

H.E. Cas Piancey@cascoinfoundation.org · 2mo ago

I don’t like Ryan Grim, but he had a great retort imho Like yeah, dawg, shares.

Learned today that Dax Shepard has views about the constitutionality of #Prop40, the CA Billionaire Tax, and my mind is blown. To be clear, those views appear to be, you know, as accurate as you expect from a podcaster who starred in a reboot of CHiPS, but still cool to see citizen engagement.

Free advice for editors: I would accept a lot more referee report requests if the for-profit editorial service to whom I am contributing free labor would reduce the ratio of "hours wasted on login efforts" to "actual time spent reviewing" to a more reasonable ratio, ideally less than one.

I was impressed by this very thorough and IMO fair analysis of Prop 40 (the CA billionaire tax) from @calbudgetcenter.org Lots of very nice examples but also reasonable discussion of the possible unknowns. calbudgetcenter.org/resources/bi...

Billionaire Tax Explained: What Proposition 40 Would Mean for California

Understand California's Proposition 40, the proposed one-time billionaire wealth tax, and its potential impacts on the state.

calbudgetcenter.org

Interesting development: China getting tougher on offshore trusts than the U.S. There now will be 20% tax on contributions to or distributions from trusts for China taxpayers. www.cnbc.com/2026/08/05/w... U.S. trusts in theory face both (at 40% rates) but with modern planning can avoid either.

China's super-rich 'in shock' and hunting for cash as Beijing issues surprise tax on offshore trusts

Beijing's move to tax offshore trusts, long used by China's ultra-rich to hold money, has set off a rush to lawyers and a scramble for cash.

cnbc.com

This whole long-ass thread is a great read for two interesting (and not necessarily mutually exclusive) takes on what's wrong with U.S. production capacity across many industries. (I'd love to see the author add a climate externalities layer, too!)

Jeff Gordon@jeffgordon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I have a new working paper up on SSRN, Tax and the Law of Market Cycles. The core idea is: what if we applied everything we've learned about countercyclical macroprudential regulation to the boom-bust cycles of physical commodities and heavy industries? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I've heard that in addition to all that boring con law stuff there will also be a chapter about states using their tax authority to counter oligarchy. Could be a good time.

UC Berkeley Law@ucberkeleylaw.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Upcoming Event: The Edley Center on Law & Democracy hosts the Thomas David and Judith Swope Clark Symposium on Constitutional Interpretation on August 28 to discuss ways states can fight back to counter authoritarianism. Register: https://bit.ly/4h7CuiR #BerkeleyLaw