Professor Shanske Talks to New Republic About Efforts to Counter ‘Billionaire Tax’

The New Republic quoted Professor Darien Shanske extensively in a May 26 essay by Alex Thomas exploring efforts by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and others to fight the “billionaire’s tax” California ballot initiative with competing initiatives.

“If reasonable people don’t want to vote for it, they don’t have to vote for it – it’s on the ballot, and that’s the whole point,” Shanske told the publication about the “billionaire’s tax,” a one-time, 5% tax proposal he helped draft. “The whole point of [Brin’s ballot measures] is to trick somebody who votes for the billionaire tax to vote also for these, and I should say that these things are sloppily drafted. If they both pass, there’s gonna be a big fight … but what they’re attempting is deceptive and full of contempt for voters.”

Darien Shanske is a Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis. His academic interests include taxation, particularly state and local taxation, local government law, public finance, and political theory, particularly jurisprudence.

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