The Mercury News22%
Opinion: Big-money Bay Area interests try to shift tax burden onto the poor 75%
By Marc Joffe0%
7/22/2026, 10:45:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Tu Quoque, Politically Left Leaning Bias, and Anecdotal, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 30.2% saturation with 188 hits. Analysis detected 916 faulty-reasoning hits from 623 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 66.9% and a BS Rank of 75% (5,550 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 74.60% of the article peer group.
Tax measures headed for the November ballot are producing some discordant responses.
Take, for example, crypto-billionaire Chris Larsen.
He is spending big to stop the Billionaire Wealth Tax while also spending big in support of this November’s transit sales tax.
That measure will push total sales tax rates up by another 0.5% in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, and Contra Costa Counties, while adding 1% in San Francisco.
If the tax passes, Oakland residents will pay 11.25% on essential items while those in San Jose will face a 10.50% sales tax.
Now don’t get me wrong.
I plan to vote against the Billionaire Wealth Tax for the reasons Gov.
Gavin Newsom has laid out.
Since it would apply in one state, targets of the tax can save themselves hundreds of millions or even billions by simply moving to another state as Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have already done.
This jeopardizes the tech sector that powers California’s economy.
Affluent individuals supply a large proportion of California’s general fund revenue, which is likely to be impaired by relocations of billionaires and potential billionaires, fearful that the tax will not be a one-time affair.
Because the SEIU-sponsored billionaire tax disproportionately funds Medi-Cal, it could have the unintended effect of reducing funds available for other state priorities including K-12 and Higher Education.
But while I plan to vote No on the billionaire tax, I am less inclined to work against it, given the hypocrisy of some of its opponents.
The Bay Area Council, in its statement opposing the tax, insisted that California must align spending growth with economic reality and demand greater accountability.
And yet it then blessed the transit sales tax on the theory that it is tied to efficiency measures which are little more than window dressing.
If the Bay Area Council thought a transit tax was essential, it could have found an alternative to the regressive sales tax now on the ballot.
For example, it could have supported the regional gross receipts tax on the largest corporations proposed by Voices for Public Transportation.
Instead, the Council signed onto a letter to legislators strenuously opposing this more progressive alternative.
Perhaps it is unsurprising that the Bay Area Council wants the transit tax because seven of its members are transit agencies on the receiving end of the tax revenue, and two more are firms that compete for contracts with these agencies.
Both HNTB Corporation and WSP are Bay Area Council members, major donors to the Connect Bay Area tax hike campaign and transit agency contractors.
(Earlier this decade, HNTB received $84 million in contracts from BART to study a second tunnel under San Francisco Bay.
That project turned out to be a total waste of money.)
Also vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy is Meta: one of the largest corporate funders of the Connect Bay Area sales tax campaign.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently closed on a $170 million Miami estate in the enclave nicknamed the Billionaire Bunker, a move widely read as shielding his fortune from future wealth taxation, even as the company he controls works to make daily life costlier for families who own no comparable wealth to protect.
“Taxes for thee but not for me” will not be a winning formula in 2026.
If billionaires and corporate interests want taxpayer advocates to rally fiscally conservative voters against the wealth tax, they should be taking a more consistent view and taking into account that many of our region’s less affluent voters are struggling to afford the high cost of living here.
*Marc Joffe is president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association.
Opinions expressed here are his own.
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