TechCrunch reports that Mark Zuckerberg has come up with a creative plan to pay California's proposed billionaire tax without losing control of Meta.
The mechanics matter because of how Meta is built. Zuckerberg controls the company through a dual-class share structure that concentrates voting power in his hands — the arrangement that gives him effective control of a business worth more than a trillion dollars even as his economic stake is a fraction of it.
California's proposal would tax the wealth of the state's richest residents. A founder's largest asset is precisely the kind of closely held stock that is tied to voting rights and painful to sell in size, which is why wealth taxes and founder control have always sat awkwardly together.
If Zuckerberg has found a way to settle the tax bill without diluting his voting grip, the plan becomes a template — for other founders built on dual-class structures, and for lawmakers drafting wealth taxes who now have to assume the people being taxed will structure around them.
The details of the plan itself, and how California's proposal would actually be implemented, are in the original TechCrunch report.
