Rogé Karma has a new piece in the Atlantic on California’s proposed wealth tax (“If You Tax Them, Will They Leave?“) that includes some interesting back-and-forth and some takes from academics on the issue of capital flight. Here is a taste:

The tax’s designers . . . think they’ve come up with a clever solution to capital flight: a one-off tax that is retroactive, based on a billionaire’s residency status on January 1, 2026. In other words, unless they’ve already fled the state, billionaires won’t be able to move to avoid paying the tax. “At this point, there’s no financial incentive to leave California,” [Gabriel] Zucman said. “You’re going to pay the same amount either way.”

Contrary to what its opponents claim, moreover, the tax is carefully designed to avoid the most common objections. If billionaires are worried that the government will improperly value their assets, they can submit independent third-party appraisals. If they can’t come up with the full 5 percent all at once, they can spread out payments over five years, though they would be charged interest. If their fortunes are tied up in “illiquid assets” such as a privately held start-up, they can defer the tax rather than having to sell their stake. “So many of these criticisms are either completely ignorant or made in bad faith,” Brian Galle, a law professor at UC Berkeley who helped write the bill, told me. “I think it’s pretty clear that these guys will basically say anything to protect their giant mountains of wealth.”