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San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

latimes.com

91–100 of 754 posts

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#91
This is a terrible law. How exactly do you measure the compensation of the CEO of Ikea (moving into SF soon at 6th and Market), Adidas, DJI, Atlassian, Spotify etc? Exchange rates fluctuate a lot and stock based compensation is tricky.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#92
post #8

> hopes the tax will drive companies to reexamine their compensation structures Outsource the lowest paid workers to a subcontractor to raise your average employee wage. I’m not sure that has a desirable effect, but it seems this law certainly financially encourages that.

Or just leave San Francisco. Stripe left.

Bechtel, McKesson, Petrovich, Jamba Juice, Core-Mark, Houzz, Lyft, Xero, Pandora, Robin Hood, and hundreds others have moved their HQ to somewhere other than California.

You can pay lower paid workers a higher effective wage in pretty much anywhere but California.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#93
post #6

From: https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2020/11/san-francis... > The tax will levy an extra 0.1% to 0.6% on gross receipts made in San Francisco for companies whose highest paid executive makes 100 times or more its median worker’s salary. The amount levied will increase in 0.1% brackets proportionally to the pay ratio. A company whose highest paid employee earns 200 times more than its median San Francisco wo…

I'd also be surprised if it brings in anywhere near the quoted amount since the SF supervisors have proven themselves incapable of considering second order effects such as companies contracting out their low-pay roles or simply leaving SF.

this is a tax on high pay roles, so I don't understand your concern. Also I hope and pray that it would cause companies to move, that is essentially working towards the same goal.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the city's fault the housing is expensive, which is the reason for the high cost of living.

Maybe if San Francisco did things differently, costs might look like other cities and counties in the Bay Area. Either way, it's going to be much more expensive than your typical city.

> costs might look like other cities and counties in the Bay Area

True, but most likely in a way that also reduced the cost in other cities and counties, because the high cost of SF has pushed people out to lower cost areas in the outskirts. If SF wasn't so expensive, more people from the surrounding area would live there, having the desire if price wasn't the issue, therefore reducing demand and thus costs for the outer areas.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#96
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, this is problematic if the executive is compensated primarily in stock options.

Why do you think it is problematic? According to my reading of OP, the measures includes stock options in calculating comp.

It's hard to calculate this accurately. Look at all the news articles greatly exaggerating Elon's stock compensation plan at Tesla.

Keep in mind they also have to calculate this for certain employees.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#98
post #68

To everyone saying, "this will kill low wage jobs", most companies already outsource their low wage jobs. Their janitors and cooks and maintenance people are already via contractors. Their lowest paid employees are most likely their admin assistants at $50K a year. So basically this is targeting companies whose CEOs make over $50M a year, which is basically Twitter, Pinterest, Google, Facebook, Uber and a few others…

Google and Facebook are in the SF Bay Area and not in SF City. Also, Zuckerberg gets a $1 salary. Unless this law targets full compensation (stocks included), it's not going to touch him. FB is too big to accept a 0.1% or 0.6% gross tax. This law is targeting smaller companies (think Stripe and similar).

San Jose is an alternative for the CEO/Headquarters. There could be a minor office in the city where tech workers prefer to live, or they could commute down instead of up. Imo, SF City is overplaying their hand here and might be in a bit of a shock for the reality of how business works. The last bubble and good times might have distorted their understanding.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#99
post #98
post #68

To everyone saying, "this will kill low wage jobs", most companies already outsource their low wage jobs. Their janitors and cooks and maintenance people are already via contractors. Their lowest paid employees are most likely their admin assistants at $50K a year. So basically this is targeting companies whose CEOs make over $50M a year, which is basically Twitter, Pinterest, Google, Facebook, Uber and a few others…

Google and Facebook are in the SF Bay Area and not in SF City. Also, Zuckerberg gets a $1 salary. Unless this law targets full compensation (stocks included), it's not going to touch him. FB is too big to accept a 0.1% or 0.6% gross tax. This law is targeting smaller companies (think Stripe and similar). San Jose is an alternative for the CEO/Headquarters. There could be a minor office in the city where tech workers…

The law says any company operating in SF, which would include FB and Google, who have offices there.

Also the law says all compensation, including stocks and bonuses. So Zuck would definitely qualify.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#100
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but is the rest of the Bay area enough better that they can trust they won't end up the same way in the near future.

Contra Costa is full of open space and I believe that many of the cities from Walnut Creek out would bend over backwards to pull in these types of jobs.

There's a mini-silicon valley shaping up in the East Bay along the 580/680 corridor - towns like Dublin, Pleasanton etc are growing rapidly with existing companies and new ones - Oracle, Workday, Snowflake etc are all there.

It helps that they are also much more new housing friendly than SF and SV.

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