The November 2026 Wealth-Tax Votes: What California, Washington, and Cook County Decided
The Million Dollar Question: On election night, California’s billionaire tax was losing by about 13 points. Which measure on the same California ballot, also aimed at high earners, was winning by nearly 18?
A) Prop 41, the tax-audit measure B) Prop 42, the ban on new wealth taxes C) Prop 3, making the high-earner income tax permanent D) None of themRead on for the answer.
Three places voted on taxing the very top on November 3, 2026. This is what the counts showed as of November 4, what is still being counted, and what each result sets in motion. California counts slowly, and no California race discussed here had been called when this was written.
What was on the ballot
Three separate questions, aimed at three very different groups of people.
California, Proposition 40. A one-time tax of 5% of net worth on billionaires who lived in California on January 1, 2026, based on their net worth as of December 31, 2026, payable in one lump sum or in installments over five years, according to CalMatters. It covers the $1B+ band only: a few hundred households at most. We covered the run-up, and the money behind it, in our pre-election piece on Prop 40.
California, Propositions 41 and 42. The opposition’s own measures. CalMatters describes Prop 42 as prohibiting the state “from taxing financial assets, private businesses, pensions and other forms of wealth” and barring retroactive taxes; Prop 41 targets taxes that sit outside the state’s 1979 spending limit and adds audits of future tax proposals. Either can cancel Prop 40 by out-polling it (more on that below). Governor Gavin Newsom endorsed Prop 42.
Washington, Initiative 645. A repeal of the state’s new 9.9% tax on household income above $1 million, which Governor Bob Ferguson signed on March 30. This one reaches a broader band: anyone with a seven-figure income year, not just the $1B+ group.
Cook County, Illinois. A non-binding advisory question. As quoted by the Illinois Policy Institute, it asked whether Illinois should adopt “the Millionaire Amendment for Property Tax Relief and Education, which would enact a 3% income tax surcharge only on millionaires,” with half the revenue for property-tax relief and half for schools.
California: Prop 40 trails, Prop 42 leads
The billionaire tax was behind from the first returns and stayed there.
In the NBC News Decision Desk count published early on November 4, with roughly half the expected vote in:
| Measure | Yes | No | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prop 40 (billionaire tax) | 43.6% (2,812,114) | 56.4% (3,640,633) | Too early to call |
| Prop 41 (audits, spending limit) | 47.4% (3,003,346) | 52.6% (3,339,178) | Too early to call |
| Prop 42 (ban on new wealth taxes) | 54.4% (3,484,177) | 45.6% (2,919,184) | Too early to call |
| Prop 3 (high-earner income tax made permanent) | 58.9% (3,556,451) | 41.1% (2,484,119) | Not called |
CalMatters, citing the Associated Press, reported Prop 40 “trailing by 56% with 54% of votes counted” and said it “appeared headed for defeat.” It did not report an AP call, and neither did any other source checked for this post.
That caution is warranted. California accepts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive up to seven days later, ABC7 notes. A 13-point gap is large, but roughly half the expected vote was still out.
Even a late comeback faces a second hurdle. In California, when two measures on the same ballot conflict, the one with more yes votes prevails. As CalMatters put it, “if either countermeasure receives more votes than Prop. 40, it nullifies the billionaire tax.” In the partial count, Prop 42 had about 670,000 more yes votes than Prop 40, and even the losing Prop 41 had more yes votes than Prop 40. For the billionaire tax to take effect, it would have to win outright and also out-poll Prop 42’s yes column, which in the early count were moving in opposite directions.
The sponsor is already looking past this ballot. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, which put Prop 40 on the ballot, vowed to try again in 2028 if the Legislature “fails to deliver a real solution,” CalMatters reported.
Washington: the millionaires’ tax survives its first vote
Washington looked very different. Voters were asked whether to repeal a tax on the top and, on early returns, declined.
Election-night results reported by Source ONE News had 911,390 votes against I-645 (58.41%) and 648,860 for it (41.59%). The Seattle Times put King County at 66.5% against repeal, with the measure also trailing in Snohomish and Pierce counties, and noted that “hundreds of thousands of additional ballots remain to be counted in the coming days.” The Spokesman-Review reported repeal majorities in a band of rural eastern counties, including Ferry, Pend Oreille, Lincoln, Adams and Franklin. Ferguson and the tax’s supporters claimed victory Tuesday night. No AP call appeared in the sources checked for this post, so this is a decisive lead, not yet a certified result.
What survives, if the lead holds, is a 9.9% tax on household income above $1 million. Only the portion above the threshold is taxed: KNKX’s example is a household with $1.5 million of income paying 9.9% on $500,000, or $49,500. The tax takes effect in 2028, with the first payments collected in 2029. The state’s fiscal note, as summarized by KNKX, estimates more than $11 billion over the first three years, including $3 billion in the first year.
Cook County: a loud yes that changes nothing on its own
Cook County’s question drew the most lopsided result of the night and carries the least legal weight.
The Center Square, via Yahoo, reported 71.5% yes in suburban Cook County and 80.65% yes in Chicago, with 1,232 of 1,291 Chicago precincts reported. The Illinois Policy Institute, which opposes the idea, put the yes vote at “over 75%.”
None of that changes the law. Illinois has a constitutionally required flat income tax, so a millionaire surcharge would need a constitutional amendment passed by the General Assembly and then approved by voters statewide. A proposed amendment, HJRCA 21, failed earlier this year; the Illinois Policy Institute says the next possible statewide vote would be November 2028. The last attempt at a graduated income tax, in 2020, failed at the polls.
The stakes are also a matter of dispute. An April report from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, cited by NBC Chicago, estimated the surcharge would affect about 41,000 people statewide and raise $3.8 billion in its first full year, rising to $4.2 billion a year by 2030. The Illinois Policy Institute argues that would fall more than $2 billion short of the property-tax relief supporters promise. Note, too, that the ballot language says “millionaires” without specifying whether the 3% applies to all income or only income above $1 million, a gap the Illinois Policy Institute flagged.
What the money bought
California’s Prop 40 campaign was among the most expensive ballot fights in the state’s history.
CalMatters reported that “billionaire opponents and business interests poured $316.7 million into the campaign to stop Prop. 40,” counting their support for Props 41 and 42. Sergey Brin, who founded the main opposition committee, Building a Better California, gave it $102 million, by CalMatters’ count. Mission Local put the committee’s spending at more than $304 million and said Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen gave $12.5 million to stop the tax. These totals come from different filing cutoffs and committee groupings and will continue to change as final reports come in. A comparable final total for the supporting side was not available in the reports checked for this post.
Washington ran the other way. The Seattle Times reported the Yes on I-645 campaign raised about $3.9 million, “mainly from several individual business owners,” against about $13 million for the No campaign. The Spokesman-Review’s breakdown: the No side spent more than $12.6 million, with backers including the Spokane Regional Labor Council and Planned Parenthood Advocates; Let’s Go Washington, which also ran two other initiatives, spent $4.2 million this cycle; and a second repeal committee spent $3.4 million. Detailed itemized reports for both states are public at Cal-Access and Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission.
Put side by side, the two contests suggest money mattered most where it changed the question rather than the answer. In California, the bulk of the opposition money went to two measures that gave voters something to vote for. In Washington, where the outspent side was trying to repeal an existing tax, the money ran roughly three to one the other way and the result followed it.
What happens next
California. Counting continues. Counties have 30 days to certify their results, and state election officials have a December 11 certification deadline, Law Commentary reported. If Prop 40 loses, nothing else happens: there is no tax, and the January 1, 2026 residency snapshot that made it so hard to escape by moving becomes moot. If it somehow passes but Prop 42 gets more yes votes, the conflicting-measures rule applies and litigation over how far the two measures actually conflict would be likely. If Prop 42 is certified as passing, it would block new state taxes on financial assets and business interests going forward, so any 2028 attempt would first have to deal with it. Prop 3’s apparent passage, meanwhile, would keep California’s existing high-earner income tax rates in place beyond their 2031 sunset.
Washington. The tax still has to survive the courts. A May ruling by the state Supreme Court, reported by KUOW, upheld the law’s clause blocking a referendum, which is why opponents used an initiative instead. A separate lawsuit filed in April argues the tax itself is unconstitutional; it has been essentially on hold in Klickitat County Superior Court until after the election, according to the Seattle Times. The case runs straight into a 1933 state Supreme Court ruling that income is property and must be taxed at a flat rate. The Seattle Times noted that the court that eventually decides it will include the winners of five contested Supreme Court races on this same ballot. Taxable income starts in 2028.
Cook County. Nothing, legally. The result goes to Springfield as a signal. Whether legislators revive a constitutional amendment for the 2028 ballot is the only path to an actual tax.
What people get wrong
That California voted against taxing the rich. The same electorate that rejected Prop 40 in early returns was approving Prop 3 by a wider margin. The more defensible reading is that voters rejected a specific new instrument (a one-time tax on net worth, with a retroactive residency date) while keeping a familiar one (higher income-tax rates on high earners). Those are different policies, and the counts treated them differently.
That a Prop 40 loss means billionaires “won” outright. If certified, Prop 42 would be a constitutional-level constraint on future wealth taxes in California, not just a defeat of this one. Supporters of wealth taxes would argue that matters more than the Prop 40 result itself; opponents would say that was the point.
That Washington now has a broad income tax. It does not. The tax applies only to the portion of household income above $1 million. A household earning $900,000 owes nothing under it. A household with $1.5 million of income owes 9.9% on $500,000.
That Washington’s tax is settled. Voters declined to repeal it. The courts have not ruled on whether it is constitutional, and a 90-year-old precedent stands in the way.
That Cook County’s vote created a tax. It did not, and could not. The vote was advisory, and Illinois’s flat-tax requirement is in the state constitution.
That these were the same kind of tax. California’s was a tax on wealth, the stock of what someone owns. Washington’s and Cook County’s are taxes on income, the flow of what someone earns in a year. A founder with $5 billion of stock and a modest salary would have been hit hard by Prop 40 and barely touched by Washington’s tax. A surgeon or law partner with a $2 million income year is the reverse. The full argument over wealth taxes is in Taxing the Billionaires.
Bottom line
The answer is C: Prop 3. With 47% of the expected vote in, Prop 3, which makes California’s existing high-earner income tax permanent, led 58.9% to 41.1%, a margin of about 18 points, while the billionaire wealth tax trailed by about 13.
That contrast is the clearest takeaway from November 3. Voters in all three places were, on the early numbers, willing to tax high incomes: Washington kept its 9.9% millionaires’ tax, California extended its high-earner rates, and Cook County endorsed a surcharge by a wide margin. What California voters appear to have turned down is a different and newer idea, a direct tax on net worth, especially one paired with a well-funded alternative on the same ballot.
None of these results is certified. California’s will not be final until December, Washington’s tax still faces the courts, and Cook County’s was only ever advice. We will update this post when California’s races are called.
Methods and sources: Vote counts are unofficial and come from the reports linked above, as published on November 3–4, 2026. California figures are from the NBC News Decision Desk and the Associated Press, as reported; no California race had been called by the AP at the time of writing. Official results pages from the California and Washington secretaries of state and the Cook County Clerk could not be retrieved for this post, so the figures were not checked against them directly. Campaign-finance totals are as reported by CalMatters, Mission Local, the Seattle Times and the Spokesman-Review and will change as final filings come in.
Related reading:
- The Price of Not Being Taxed: Inside the $166 Million Campaign Against Prop 40 — the pre-election story of who funded the opposition, and why most of the money went to Props 41 and 42.
- Taxing the Billionaires: Wealth-Tax Debates From California to Warren — the policy argument behind all three votes.
- Does Taxing Millionaires Make Them Leave? What the Evidence Actually Shows — the migration question Washington’s tax will now test.
- The States With No Income Tax — and What Moving There Actually Saves the Wealthy — the map Washington used to be on.
