Palmer Luckey isn’t leaving California. He says he’ll fight the wealth tax instead.

Palmer Luckey isn’t leaving California. The Anduril founder said on Monday, Oct. 26, that he will stay in the state and fight its proposed billionaire wealth tax, TechCrunch reported.

“As of right now, though, I’m not running. I am staying. I think California is something special. I want to fight for California,” Luckey said at an invite-only press conference, according to TechCrunch.

The pressure. He said other billionaires had pushed him to announce he was leaving. “They’ve said things like ‘Palmer, you have to have solidarity for us,’” he said. “I empathize with that argument, but it’s not one that I’m going to participate in right now because I still believe that we can fix things.”

The measure. The ballot measure would tax the net worth of the state’s richest residents, including assets that have not been sold and assets that are hard to turn into cash, TechCrunch reported. Penalties can reach 40%. Its sponsors, a unit of the United Healthcare Workers, say the money would go to health care, education and food assistance, including Medi-Cal.

His real objection. Luckey said his issue is not paying taxes. It is how the measure treats founders. According to the Tax Foundation, the proposal would treat someone with voting control as owning at least that share of a company. Luckey says his employees own more of Anduril than he does, but he kept the voting rights. “That is not a tax on ownership. It is a tax on control,” he said.

The math. Luckey believes he could owe 5% of Anduril’s $61 billion valuation, about $3 billion, on that asset alone, TechCrunch reported. The measure’s drafters say that reading is mistaken, arguing that super-voting shares are valued differently.

Why it matters. Luckey said his voting rights only hold “as long as I’m an American citizen living in America, running Anduril.” Anduril, based in Costa Mesa, sells defense equipment to the U.S. military. He became a billionaire at 21 when he sold Oculus VR to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, according to TechCrunch.

What’s next. “I’m hoping that this doesn’t pass,” he said. If it does, he expects legal challenges.

This is news, not tax or financial advice.