Let’s say you live in a home you bought in 1992 for $125,900.

That was the median price of a home, new or resale, in area cities that year.

Under Proposition 13, your home today is being taxed somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000. That translates into a basic property tax of $2,500 a year. The market value of your home, however, is in a much higher neighborhood pushing $500,000.

How would you like a one-time five percent personal income tax levy on the market value of your house?

That would translate into a $25,000 one-time financial hit.

And what if you bought 100 shares of Apple stock when it was below $5 a share in 1997? Today, a share is worth $267.

Do you want to pay $13.32 — a five percent tax on the value of a share you are still holding — in a one-time tax? And that tax, if you held 100 shares, would cost you $1,332.

So between the house and 100 shares of Apple stock — neither of which you are planning to sell anytime soon — if a one-time five percent state income tax was levied on their value, you would be required to send a $26,332 “bonus” check to Sacramento next April 15.

You probably would think a one-time five percent state income tax based on the value of your holdings would be a very, very bad idea.

If that is your take, Gov. Gavin Newsom agrees with you.

Newsom — as well as a number of moderate Democrat mayors in the Bay Area — are pushing back on a proposal by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West.

The proposal is a onetime five percent tax on California residents worth over $1 billion to offset $100 million in looming cuts to Medicaid.

It would tax all of the value of their holdings — stock, intellectual property rights, artwork, cars, and houses.

You might think goring the rich is the right thing to do. It is if you want to kill the golden goose — or at least get it to flee — California.

Before you storm the ramparts to stick it to the billionaires, consider this:

California’s one percent wealthiest in 2021 paid more than 50 percent of the state income tax. That was a record percentage.

In an average year, the top one percent of earners in the Golden State pay a third of the state’s income tax.

Economic research repeatedly indicates the nation’s 400 richest billionaires pay 1.3 percent of their net worth in taxes every year.

“I don’t know that people fully appreciate the vulnerability we face as a state when it comes to our revenue sources,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan noted in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

California’s massive personal income tax is cyclical with booms and busts.

That’s a bad thing. But it is also a good thing.

California taxes capital gains like personal income. There is no break for long-term investments.

And when it’s taxes, it is under one of the most progressive state tax systems in this country going from one percent to 13.3 percent.

That means when those paid in stock for tech start-ups — or invest in them — sell when they take off into the stratosphere like Tesla, Nivida, Anthropic, Meta, Alphabet, Broadcom, Netflix, Apple and other wildly successful companies rooted California, Sacramento is flooded with an atmospheric river of revenue.

Keep in mind the real issues when it comes to state finances is not the feast-or-famine effect caused by capital gains that are joined at the hip with economic success. It is the failure of Sacramento not to spend like a drunken sailor in boom times, adding programs and benefits that become entitlements that don’t go away or aren’t trimmed back when the revenue spigot is turned down.

The mindset in Sacramento – and those who look toward the state to fund all of our wants – needs to treat general fund revenue from personal income as it does water.

The state is smart enough to squirrel away water in excessive wet years to get through drought years. But put an extra $40 billion in their hands, and it’s gone in 60 seconds.

Hopefully, when they start circulating petitions in January to qualify the “one-time” billionaire’s tax on the November 2026 ballot you keep the “real problem” in mind. The “real problem” is lack of financial discipline by the California Legislature coupled with our collective “we want it now” attitude laced with an extremely toxic amount of demanding more from government and not wanting to pay more for it.

I know, I know. There is a lot of government waste thanks to bureaucratic red tape, excessive redundancy, and kowtowing to special interests across the economic and political spectrum.

But it pales in comparison to how we have come to rely more and more on Sacramento not just to cover basic needs that we can’t secure as an individual but things that go way beyond what passed as basic government in California between the mid-1950s and 1980.

It was an era when this state built its great infrastructure from water conveyance and storage to the world’s cutting edge freeway system and institutions of higher learning.

And as that era drew to a close, California instituted environment initiatives that were balanced and effective.

Now we have environmental initiatives that redefine the concept of diminishing returns and a state budget that funds programs to remedy every wrong, perceived and otherwise.

Newsom clearly gets it.

California taxing vast fortunes that exist primarily on paper is a first-in-the-world tax on the super wealthy.

The Golden State has 225 billionaires who still are carrying the bulk of the personal income tax burden.

Even if the one-time tax sours 10 percent of them on California and they up and move away, that will create a major blow to ongoing funding of the state budget.

Plus open the door on “one-time” taxes, and it won’t be that long until someone pushes the wealth level for another “one-time” tax down even lower into the population.

A lot of people believe someone worth $1 million is living high on the hog and should be taxed more.

But that could be you or your neighbor who owns a home, perhaps a couple of cars including one you are restoring, a modest 401k, and perhaps collectibles such as baseball cards.

We can’t afford to chase billionaires willing to pay progressive income taxes out of California unless, of course, we want to personally pay more taxes than we do now or — do I dare say — settle for less government and benefits.

—  This column is the opinion of Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Courier or 209 Multimedia. He may be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com