A 23-year-old millionaire entrepreneur who was preparing to move to San Francisco has scrapped his plans over California’s proposed wealth tax.
Emil Barr warned the state’s political climate could drive away young business founders and cost residents job opportunities.
Barr, who immigrated to the US from Russia when he was just three, is the founder of Flashpass, a Columbus, Ohio-based company that helps laid-off workers develop new skills and find jobs faster.
He had already signed a personal lease in San Francisco and planned to relocate first, settle into the city and potentially bring his business to California afterward.
But Barr changed his mind after learning about Proposition 40, a proposed wealth tax targeting the state’s richest residents on this year’s Nov. 3 ballot, which he fears could eventually expand to millionaires like himself.
“I just didn’t feel welcomed as an entrepreneur,” Barr told The California Post. “Obviously, I’m a little bit more sensitive to this because I work with government, but I said, why would I move to a state where the government is basically, first of all, villainizing entrepreneurs and saying that, for some reason, if you built a successful chip manufacturing company, the fact that the healthcare system isn’t working is your fault?”
Proposition 40 would levy a one-time 5% tax on billionaires who were living in California as of Jan. 1, 2026.
Unlike income taxes, the measure would target their total accumulated wealth, with the bulk of the money raised going toward the state’s healthcare.
Barr is not the only prominent critic of the proposal. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has also come out against the measure, while Google cofounder Sergey Brin has contributed money to efforts to defeat it.
But supporters, including Debru Carthan, vice president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the union spearheading the initiative, have pushed back against warnings that the tax would send wealthy Californians and investors fleeing the state.
Carthan told Fortune that those concerns are unfounded. Supporters argue the measure is necessary to help offset an estimated $100 billion in federal healthcare funding that California could lose over the next five years.
As for Barr, he said the proposed tax was also particularly concerning because of its potential retroactive implications, which he believes could force wealthy individuals to pay taxes based on assets they held before the measure was approved.
Although the proposal would not currently apply to him, he fears it could set a precedent for taxing entrepreneurs with smaller fortunes.
“Today it’s the billionaires,” Barr said, expressing concern that future proposals could target people worth $10 million or more.
For Barr, the decision wasn’t simply about avoiding higher taxes. He said he understood that doing business in California would be expensive and was initially willing to accept that cost.
What ultimately drove him away, he said, was what he perceived as an increasingly hostile political attitude toward successful entrepreneurs.
“Why would I move to a state where the government is basically, first of all, villainizing entrepreneurs,” Barr said.
His decision could also have consequences beyond his own business.
Barr founded Flashpass about two years ago after selling his first company, Step Up Social, a marketing and media business he started at 18 while in college.
Flashpass now works with government agencies to help unemployed people retrain and return to the workforce more efficiently.
California initially seemed like an ideal place to expand because of its concentration of artificial intelligence companies and research labs.
Barr believed the state would be among the first to experience major job displacement as AI technology advances, creating an opportunity for Flashpass to help workers transition into new careers.
“We saw like a very logical reason to be near the newest AI developments and also closest to the people that are losing their jobs first due to AI,” Barr said.
He argued that without his company establishing a presence in California, residents could have fewer opportunities to access its services and find employment quickly.
“I don’t think California is going to have the same level of access to our platform,” Barr said, adding that residents “aren’t going to be able to find new work as quickly just by virtue of our business not being there.”
Those potential effects remain uncertain, however, because Barr had not yet committed to relocating the company or established how many California workers Flashpass might have served.
His original plan was to move himself to San Francisco before deciding whether to relocate the business.
“I had a personal lease in place and I was planning to move,” Barr said.
But without the founder living in California, he said, moving the company’s headquarters there was no longer a realistic possibility.
Barr acknowledged that California would lose relatively little in taxes from his decision alone. Instead, he believes the larger concern is what could happen if other young entrepreneurs follow his lead.
He said he knows other business founders who have privately decided to leave California or avoid relocating there, although many are reluctant to speak publicly about their decisions because of Silicon Valley’s reputation as a global center of innovation.
“There’s this like idea that if you’re not in Silicon Valley, you can’t build an innovative company,” Barr said.
He believes entrepreneurs who disagree with California’s policies should make their opposition known through their business decisions, rather than continuing to invest in a state whose political leaders they believe are targeting them.
Barr’s company remains based in Columbus, where it was established after receiving its first government contract from the state of Ohio.
He said he has not ruled out relocating the business elsewhere, but California is no longer under consideration.
“I’m not even 100% sure we’ll keep the business in Ohio,” Barr said. “But I definitely know it’s not going to be California just based off of the political and business rhetoric that’s coming out of that state right now.”
