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Should California tax retirement accounts? Campaign wants voters to block any new efforts

April 28, 2026

California voters may be asked a lot of questions about taxes in the fall.

The campaign behind an effort billed as protecting personal property, including retirement and savings accounts, from future or retroactive taxes says it has collected more than 1.4 million signatures — well over the amount needed — to qualify for the general election ballot.

This comes on the heels of a similar announcement from the campaign of a much-debated ballot measure aimed at offsetting federal healthcare cuts by taxing the state’s wealthiest residents.

The two, however, may be a bit more intricately linked.

Called the Retirement & Personal Savings Protection Act, the campaign highlights California’s affordability issues and argues retroactive changes to tax laws could be unfair to those who have diligently planned for retirement.

And while it notes that California doesn’t tax retirement accounts on their value now, it still points to previous efforts in the statehouse to implement certain taxes — including a 2023 bill that would have imposed a tax on residents with a net worth of more than $1 billion, had it not died relatively early in the legislative process.

While some of those efforts start out by targeting the ultra-wealthy, backers of this measure say, they can end up being pushed down the economic ladder, impacting more middle-class folks.

“California is already a tough place for small businesses to survive,” Mike Hughes, the Long Beach-based president of the California Small Business Association, said in a statement.

“Rising rent, energy bills, payroll and existing taxes leave many mom-and-pop shops struggling to make ends meet,” Hughes said. “This measure offers much-needed relief by stopping politicians from imposing new taxes on the mere ownership of small businesses, which will help local businesses keep their doors open.”

Jim Cunningham Jr., an attorney who specializes in estate, trust and probate law in California, said it wouldn’t be a heavy lift, from an administrative standpoint, to levy additional taxes on retirement accounts.

“Functionally, a retirement account would be easy to tax, but politically, it would be tricky,” said Cunningham, who is not part of the campaign pushing the ballot measure. “It’s probably a good idea to have it in the (state) constitution.”

But Darien Shanske, an expert in taxation and state and local government who teaches at UC Davis School of Law, called the campaign a “Trojan horse.” The goal, he said, is “frustrating the billionaire tax by ostensibly protecting retirement assets that don’t need protection.”

“It’s a response on the surface to a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Shankse.

It’s the provision, though, that prohibits “retroactive taxes” on personal property that Shanske said really tackles a potential future tax on billionaires.

If both initiatives made it onto the general election ballot — and both passed — the retirement campaign could offset the billionaire tax if it received more votes if they are deemed to conflict, according to California law. However, the question of if they do conflict would likely need to be litigated in court, said veteran Sacramento lobbyist Chris Micheli.

“The bottom line is that polling shows the billionaire wealth tax is extremely popular, but there is a massive amount of funding going to opposing it because it is extremely popular,” said David Gamage, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law who was one of the authors of the proposed California Billionaire Tax Act.

“A lot of this funding is going to spreading misinformation, and there are a series of anti-billionaire wealth tax ballot measure proposals they are gathering signatures for,” Gamage said. “This is one of them.”

Behind the Retirement & Personal Savings Protection Act is a group called Building a Better California, backed by billionaire Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

It’s also pushing a couple of other initiatives dubbed “spoiler propositions,” the Mercury News reported, that could weaken or challenge the billionaire tax, should it pass.

The campaign behind the Retirement & Savings Protection Act maintains, though, that the underlying goal is simply to protect the average Californian, while affordability is already top of mind.

It is not a direct response to the billionaire tax effort championed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, said Nathan Click, a spokesperson for the Retirement & Savings Protection Act campaign.

“This initiative delivers that certainty by protecting retirement, life savings and other forms of personal property from new taxes,” Click said. “Californians deserve to know that their hard-earned savings will be there when they need them.”

“California is the third most expensive state in the nation to retire in, with the average Californian needing almost $2 million in savings to retire. Our state’s affordability crisis and high taxes already make it difficult for people to get ahead or save enough for retirement. We don’t need additional barriers,” Click said.

The campaign is in the process of turning in its more than 1.4 million signatures to the secretary of state this week, Click said. About 875,000 valid signatures are required to qualify for the general election statewide ballot.

Politically speaking, the proposal to levy a new tax on California’s billionaires is split. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders supports the idea, holding a rally for it in Los Angeles earlier this year, while Gov. Gavin Newsom has opposed it, going so far as to say he’s committed to defeating it.

A March poll of California voters found 52% were inclined to support it, while 33% said they were not, according to the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies survey. Support was higher among Democrats and no party preference voters, while Republicans overwhelmingly said they would vote no.

Another note from the poll: 60% of registered voters asked said they had already read about or heard of the proposed billionaire tax.

Statewide ballot measures are approved by a majority vote. The California secretary of state will certify initiatives that qualified for the general election ballot on June 25.

Orange County Register

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Should California tax retirement accounts? Campaign wants voters to block any new efforts

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