帕尔默·拉基21岁时就成为加州亿万富翁，当时他于2014年将自己创办的第一家公司——虚拟现实头显制造商Oculus VR——以20亿美元的价格卖给了Facebook。他目前的公司国防科技公司Anduril总部位于加利福尼亚州科斯塔梅萨，离拉基成长的长滩不远。而Anduril的价值远高于此，其上一次估值为610亿美元。
Palmer Luckey has been a California billionaire since he was 21 years old, when he sold his first company, virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR, to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. His current company, defense tech firm Anduril, is headquartered in in Costa Mesa, California, not far from Long Beach, where Luckey grew up. And Anduril is worth far more. It was last valued at $61 billion.
虽然拉基显然厌恶这项拟议中的加州亿万富翁财富税——这是一项针对该州最富有居民净资产征税的投票提案——但他表示，自己不会因此离开加州。
While Luckey clearly despises the proposed California billionaire wealth tax, a ballot measure that would tax the net worth of the state’s richest residents, he said he’s not leaving California over it.
“我认为这项税法，如果你能称之为税的话，将会引发很多问题。它正在让很多我不希望他们离开的人逃离。它将导致我合作的公司离开该州，这对我来说是个问题。不过，目前我还没有逃跑。我会留下。我认为加州是个特别的地方。我要为加州而战，”拉基在周一举行的一场仅限受邀参加的新闻发布会上表示。
“I think that this tax act, if you can call it a tax, is going to cause a lot of problems. It’s causing a lot of people to run who I don’t want to be running. It’s going to cause companies that I work with to leave the state, which is a problem for me. As of right now, though, I’m not running. I am staying. I think California is something special. I want to fight for California,” Luckey said during an invite-only press conference on Monday.
他补充说，他感受到了来自其他亿万富翁的压力，要求他宣布离开的意图。
He added that he’s felt pressure from other billionaires to declare his intention to leave.
“这一直是我和其他一些亿万富翁朋友之间的摩擦点，”他说。“他们说过诸如‘帕尔默，你必须对我们表示团结。你不能助长这些非常糟糕的政策。如果你留下，如果你不离开，这会让他们觉得没有后果。’我理解这个论点，但我目前不打算参与，因为我仍然相信我们可以解决问题。”拉基还补充说，他反对的不是纳税的想法，而是该法案由特定工会——美国医疗保健工人联盟的一个分会——发起，该工会希望将税收筹集到的资金“用于他们自己的用途”，他说。
“This has been a point of friction between me and some of my other billionaire friends,” he said. “They’ve said things like ‘Palmer, you have to have solidarity for us. You can’t enable these really bad policies. If you stay and if you don’t leave, it’s going to show them that there’s no consequences.’ I empathize with that argument, but it’s not one that I’m going to participate in right now because I still believe that we can fix things.”Luckey added that it’s not the idea of paying taxes that he takes issue with, but that the bill is sponsored by specific union, a unit of the United Healthcare Workers, that wants to use the money the tax would raise “for their uses,” he said.
该法案的发起人表示，这笔钱将用于该州的“医疗保健、教育和食品援助”项目，并特别提到了医疗补助计划（Medi-Cal），即加利福尼亚州为低收入居民提供的健康保险计划。
The measure’s sponsors say the money will be used for “health care, education, and food assistance” programs in the state, and they specifically name Medi-Cal, California’s health coverage program for low-income residents.
对拉基来说，另一个问题与其他人一样，是该提案将如何评估应缴税款以及罚款。该提案将对“财富”征税，包括尚未出售的未实现资产以及难以变现的非流动资产。罚款最高可达40%。
Another issue is for Luckey, as for others, is how the proposal would assess the tax owed, as well as the penalties. It would tax “wealth” including unrealized assets that haven’t been sold, and illiquid assets that are hard to turn into cash. And penalties can be assessed as high as 40%.
“这几乎就像是以这种方式扣押未来财富。那甚至不是真正的问题。最大的问题是对控制自己公司的征税，”他说。据税务基金会（Tax Foundation，一家税务政策智库）称，该提案将拥有投票控制权的人视为至少拥有相同比例的公司股权。这将影响拥有超级投票权股份的创始人，因为这类股份每股拥有额外投票权，而创始人可能只持有公司少数股权。
“It’s almost like a seizure of future wealth in that way. That’s not even the real problem. The biggest problem is the tax on control of your own company,” he said. According to the Tax Foundation, a tax policy think tank, the proposal treat someone someone with voting control as owning at least that same share of the company. This would affect founders with super-voting shares, which carry extra votes per share, because they may own only a minority of the company.
例如，一位拥有40%投票权但仅持有10%所有权的创始人，可能会被按至少拥有40%股权征税，而出售其所有股份可能也不足以支付税款。（该措施的起草人表示，这种解读是错误的，他们认为超级投票权股份是公开交易的资产，估值方式不同。）“我是一位筹集了大量资金的创始人，我自己被稀释了很多。我把股权给了员工，”拉基（Luckey）谈及自身情况时说。
A founder with 40% of the votes but 10% of the ownership, for example, could be taxed as if they owned at least 40%, and selling all their shares might not cover the bill. (The measure’s drafters say that reading is mistaken, arguing that super-voting shares are publicly traded assets and are valued differently.)“I’m a founder who’s raised a bunch of money, I’ve diluted myself a lot. I’ve given equity to my employees,” Luckey said of his own situation.
“我的员工在Anduril的股权比我多。我把大量股权给了人，但我所做的是保留了投票权，这样当这些员工出售股份来偿还房贷或其他用途时，投票控制权就不会流到公司外部的人手中。”他还说，如果他有朝一日离开，“我将失去所有这些投票权。我的投票权只有在我作为美国公民、居住在美国、经营Anduril期间才有效。”考虑到Anduril主要是一家向美国军方销售设备的国防承包商，这一条件是合理的。
“My employees have more equity in Anduril than me. I’ve given a lot of equity out to people, but what I have done is I’ve preserved the voting rights so that as those employees sell their shares to pay off their home loans or whatever, that the voting control doesn’t go to other people outside the company.”He also said that if he were ever to leave, “I lose all those voting rights. My voting rights only stick as long as I’m an American citizen living in America, running Anduril.”The condition makes sense given that Anduril is primarily a defense contractor selling equipment to the U.S. military.
在拉基的案例中，他认为自己可能需要缴纳安德里尔公司610亿美元资产中5%的税款，仅就该项资产而言，账单约为30亿美元。（作为比较，谷歌联合创始人拉里·佩奇虽然已离开加利福尼亚州，但仍拥有Alphabet公司27%的投票控制权，Alphabet是谷歌的母公司，市值略低于4万亿美元。）“但我计划留在加利福尼亚州。我将继续抗争，”他说。
“我希望这项法案不会通过。我希望即使它通过，也会有法律挑战，说，‘嘿，你不能事后没收人们过去和未来的财富，也不能对他们在自己公司中的投票权益征税。这真是前所未有的。这不是对所有权征税，而是对控制权征税。’”
In Luckey’s case, he believes he could owe 5% of Anduril’s $61 billion, a bill of around $3 billion, just on that asset alone. (For comparison, Larry Page, the Google co-founder who did leave California, still has 27% voting control of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which has a market value of just under $4 trillion.)“But I’m planning on staying in California. I’m going to keep fighting it,” he said. “I’m hoping that this doesn’t pass. I’m hoping if it does pass, that there are legal challenges to say, “Hey, you can’t post facto seize people’s past and future wealth, nor can you tax their voting interests in their own company. That’s truly unprecedented. That is not a tax on ownership. It is a tax on control.”