Who is paying for this fight.
Five committees, billions in announced commitments, an asymmetric ratio between sides, and a signature-gathering layer that California voters rarely see. This page is the in-depth version of the donor leaderboard on the deep dive.
- Named donors above $1M, traceable to a specific committee filing.
- Committee names and roles, anchored to the AG-filed PDF and contemporaneous press.
- Backing organizations on both sides whose support is on the public record.
- The five-counter-initiative slate filed by Building a Better California (sourced from initiative filings).
- Sub-$1M itemized contributions (would require pulling Form 460 schedules per committee).
- Specific signature-gathering vendor contracts (Form 460 expenditure schedules, by committee, by week).
- In-kind contributions broken out by service type.
- Aggregated unitemized small donor totals.
All four are obtainable via Cal-Access. They are not yet wired into the daily scrape on this site.
Four committees on the con side, one anchor on the pro side.
Lead opposition committee. Filed five companion ballot measures (retroactivity ban, Prop 98 carve-out, audit-and-refund, $25B housing bonds, CEQA reform) designed to constrain or compete with the wealth tax.
Anti-wealth-tax committee. Anchored by crypto founder donations.
Operated under the umbrella of the California Business Roundtable. Long-standing opposition vehicle for state tax increases.
Lead proponent committee. Funded primarily by SEIU-UHW with significant in-kind contributions.
Above $1M only. Itemized smaller donors live on Cal-Access.
| Donor | Side | Committees | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
Sergey Brin Google co-founder · NW $272.6B | Opposition |
| $58M |
Chris Larsen Ripple co-founder | Opposition |
| $10.5M |
SEIU-UHW Healthcare workers union Mostly in-kind contributions | Proponent |
| $3.5M |
Eric Schmidt Former Google CEO | Opposition |
| $3M |
Peter Thiel PayPal co-founder, Founders Fund | Opposition |
| $3M |
Patrick Collison Stripe co-founder | Opposition |
| $2M |
John Doerr Kleiner Perkins | Opposition |
| $2M |
Michael Moritz Sequoia Capital | Opposition |
| $2M |
Stewart Resnick Wonderful Company | Opposition |
| $1M |
The orgs whose names rotate behind the campaigns.
These organizations are not in the donor table because they do not write the checks directly (with the partial exception of SEIU-UHW). They provide infrastructure: research, endorsements, mailing lists, paid staff, communications.
- California Business Roundtable
Lobbying coalition of CA Fortune 500 CEOs. Operates Californians Against Higher Taxes.
- California Taxpayers Association (CalTax)
Established 1926. Established the California Tax Foundation in 1980, publisher of the Walczak paper.
- Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
Prop 13 defenders. Routinely opposes state-level tax increases on personal property and wealth.
- California Chamber of Commerce
State Chamber. Has historically opposed wealth-tax measures.
- Bay Area Council
Regional employer association covering San Francisco, Silicon Valley.
- Silicon Valley Leadership Group
Tech-employer policy group. Founder donations are personal, not corporate, but the constituency overlaps.
- TechNet
National tech-industry policy network. CA chapter active on state tax policy.
- SEIU-UHW (United Healthcare Workers West)
Anchor proponent. ~$3.5M in disclosed contributions, mostly in-kind.
- California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO
State labor coalition. Public endorser.
- Patriotic Millionaires
National advocacy group of high-net-worth individuals supporting wealth-tax policy.
- Public Advocates
Civil rights and economic-justice nonprofit, longtime advocate for school funding.
- California Budget & Policy Center
Research nonprofit. Publishes analysis supportive of progressive revenue measures.
Whose money, but with whose company in the headlines.
Major donors are giving as individuals. Their companies are not named on Form 460. We list the companies here for context only, because public discourse tends to attach the company name to the contribution.
- Sergey BrinGoogle / Alphabet
Personal contribution. Not corporate.
- Eric SchmidtSchmidt Futures, Alphabet (former)
Personal contribution. Splits between BBC and CABRT-CAHT.
- Patrick CollisonStripe
Personal contribution from co-founder.
- John DoerrKleiner Perkins
Personal contribution from chairman emeritus.
- Michael MoritzSequoia Heritage / Crankstart
Personal contribution; former Sequoia partner.
- Peter ThielFounders Fund / Palantir
Personal contribution; not on Palantir or Founders Fund balance sheets.
- Stewart ResnickThe Wonderful Company
Personal contribution; ag conglomerate (Fiji Water, POM, Wonderful Pistachios).
- Chris LarsenRipple
Personal contribution; via Golden State Promise.
How signatures actually get on a California ballot.
For a constitutional amendment, the proponent committee must file 874,641 valid voter signatures (8 percent of the last gubernatorial vote). The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act filed at 177 percent of threshold on April 27, 2026, which means the committee paid for, gathered, and submitted roughly 1.55 million raw signatures.
Signature gathering at that scale is done by paid firms. Per- signature rates in the 2024-2026 cycle have ranged from $4 to over $12 depending on race, deadline, and difficulty. At an implied $7 average, 1.55 million signatures equals roughly $10.85M just for gathering.
- PCI Consultants
California's largest signature-gathering firm; both sides have used in past cycles.
- Arno Petition Consultants
Long-running CA petition firm.
- Kimball Petition Management
Active CA signature management firm.
- National Petition Management
Active CA-licensed signature firm.
- Bader & Associates
Smaller-volume CA signature consultancy.
To verify which firm got the contract:pull the Save California Health Care and Public Education committee Form 460 expenditure schedule and look for line items categorized as “PRO” (professional services) or “LIT” (literature) with descriptions referencing petition or signature work. The same applies to Building a Better California for the five counter-initiatives. Cal-Access is the source of truth.
- Open cal-access.sos.ca.gov.
- Search the committee name (e.g., “Building a Better California”) under Campaign Finance.
- Open the most recent Form 460 filing. Schedule A is itemized contributions received. Schedule E is itemized expenditures.
- Cross-reference donor names and amounts against this site. If you find a discrepancy, the source-of-truth is Cal-Access; this site is wrong and should be corrected. Open a PR or DM @davidtphung.
Tracing the money, naming the names.
Returning readers should also see /projection for what California stands to gain or lose at scale, and /calculator to model individual liability.