I do think it would be a good idea to look at additional regulation regarding the public companies that pension and major index funds can invest in. I'm not crazy about being forced to own Musk properties just because I hold an S&P index, for example.
*Source: am a moron.
Emotions about the executives and founders aside, it may be worthwhile to exclude securities with multiple concentrated voting classes (like Meta) or those with one owner with more than X% of the float (like SpaceX).
But it would have been easier to relocate to the border in Tahoe than fill out mountains of paperwork; he lives on an estate in a Maui bunker anyway, not spoilt for housing options...
Not very good with building technology; he lost 80 billion on a nonexistent metaverse fail. Is that now a tax loss?
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000162828026...
NOTE: Look for "Founder Alignment Agreement" in the above doc as an example if you're doing a quick scan.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000162828026...
https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...
Guardian: Meta strikes deal with Zuckerberg to protect him from California wealth tax (39 points, 2 days ago, 33 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50193581
Wired: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Stay in California Despite Billionaires' Tax Measure (5 points, 2 days ago, 3 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188801
Telegraph: Meta strikes deal to protect Zuckerberg from California billionaire tax (9 points, 2 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50191129
WSJ: Mark Zuckerberg Threatened to Leave California. Meta’s Board Cut Him a Deal (4 points, 2 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50193052 (30 points, 1 day ago, 40 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50199284
So basically meta stepped in to say they'd pay a portion of zucks tax burden to protect the supply/demand ratio of the stock, which protects the overall market price of Facebook stock and the valuation of the company as a whole.
Wealth taxes are inherently stupid in our modern financial system and this is a clear example of why.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-10-22/zuc...
> The solution is a quasi-share split: Meta is creating a new Class C stock, with zero votes per share. Shareholders will get one no-vote Class C share for every one-vote Class A share or 10-vote Class B share that they currently own. Zuckerberg, who owns about 341 million high-vote Class B shares (and like 1 million low-vote shares), will get about 342 million new zero-vote shares; all the other shareholders, who own about 3.4 billion low-vote shares, will get 3.4 billion new no-vote shares.
And in the footnotes:
> Stock exchange rules prevent already-public companies from creating new high-vote shares, or from distributing new low/zero-vote shares in non-proportional ways. So Meta could not, for instance, give Zuckerberg a big dividend of voting shares while giving everyone else a big dividend of zero-vote shares. But this mechanism — giving everyone the same dividend of zero-voting shares — works.
It isn't stupid. Multi hundred billionaires shouldn't exist. Then this wouldn't be a "problem".
Honestly if any one has more than $999 the government should take it from them.
That is all this is, a guy giving himself a pay increase, which almost everyone would if they could.
FWIW I think this is better than avoiding the tax.
In some sense Meta has doubled the voting power of Zuckerberg's shares. Previously he had X shares with 10X votes. Now he has 2X shares, can sell half of them for close to the market price, and still keep his 10X votes.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000162828026...
"The board establishes a new Class C share type with no votes. It also announces a one-time dividend of a Class C share for each Class A and B share outstanding".
Please tell me what I got wrong.
"If Zuckerberg needs to pay taxes, he can sell his new zero-vote shares to raise money without diluting his voting rights. Not too many: He can “immediately sell or transfer up to 20% of the shares of Class C common stock that he receives in the Dividend, representing 10% of his overall economic stake in the Company, for any reason,” but the board “negotiated for and obtained Mr. Zuckerberg’s agreement that 80% of the shares of Class C common stock that he receives in the Dividend be subject to the Stapling Condition,” under which he can’t sell those no-vote shares without also selling some high-vote shares. The basic deal remains intact — he needs to own a meaningful chunk of shares to keep voting control — but there’s a liquidity buffer for taxes."
I mean maybe that is "shielding" but it's not like they are getting him out of paying the tax if it passes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...
> As a result, revenues from these taxes were disappointing. For example, revenues from the tax on fixed-income securities were initially expected to amount to 1,500 million Swedish kronor per year. They did not amount to more than 80 million Swedish kronor in any year and the average was closer to 50 million.[4] In addition, as taxable trading volumes fell, so did revenues from capital gains taxes, entirely offsetting revenues from the equity transactions tax that had grown to 4,000 million Swedish kronor by 1988
So off by an order of magnitude in their estimates _and_ nuked revenue from the capital gains taxes. Overall probably one of the dumbest ideas ever executed because it was so easy to forecast the second order effects.
My man renamed the damn corp to "Meta" and proceeded to YOLO nearly triple digit billions USD on fire, shamelessly pivots to AI like all the other bros, while holding a solid majority of voting stock, and now we have to listen to him and his pals complain they might have to give something back.
Gross.
He is going to pay, he just didn’t want to sell his normal shares, so he doesn’t lose his voting control. So instead, they are creating new class of shares that he can sell to pay the taxes.