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

latimes.com

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

#101

Post by SpaceRaccoon »

gmadsen wrote: post #44
aeternum wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if it was profitable, it would have happened already.

Two economists walk down a road and they see a twenty dollar bill lying on the side-walk. One of them asks “is that a twenty dollar bill?” Then the other one answers “It can’t be, because someone would have picked it up already,” and they keep walking.

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

#103

Post by standardUser »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #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.

You're arguing that modern finance is so complicated that it should be exempt from taxation.

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #83
drak0n1c wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes tend to increase price levels, not reduce them. Costs are passed through to every level.

It’s not that simple. You can’t pass on taxes on profits. If hypothetically charging 57$ maximizes profits then raising prices just lowers profits. Alternatively, if some aspect of your process like sugar is taxed then companies seek alternatives like corn syrup. That extends to property taxes, executive pay, etc where companies seek alternatives to better utilize resources. Though in the case of salaries that my end…

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by kansface »

kmtrowbr wrote: post #70
umeshunni wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely, this will just result in businesses continuing to leave San Francisco. The pandemic has given most companies a good reason to do so already and my bet is on most of them not returning to their overpriced San Francisco headquarters when this is eventually over.

I have lived in San Francisco since 2005. Over the time I've lived here, we've had the opposite problem: lots of highly paid tech firms moving into SF. This has changed the nature of San Francisco in a way that many dislike, including me. I was initially attracted to San Francisco because, it was chill, it was beautiful, and it had a lot of eccentric, really interesting people. Many of our good friends had to leave o…

> if SF wants to tax excessive income disparity, I say, fair enough.

None of the billionaires here made that money from their salary. This will not touch them at all.

> If they do leave, I don't see that as a bad thing.

Chasing away jobs and the tax base will not end well. There is a decent chance SF enters a financial death spiral from its pension obligations. At the very least, massive cuts are in order. SF will not be transformed magically back to the year 2005, but it could very well wind up back in the 70s.

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

#107

Post by easde »

csomar wrote: post #98
jedberg wrote: 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…

BTW, Stripe has already left San Francisco for South San Francisco (which is a different city).

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

#108

Post by NormenNomen »

aeternum wrote: post #15
hawkoy wrote: 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.

Do you have a link of what you're referring to? I know some of the supervisors personally and that strikes me as an extremely distant view of them. I think it's a lot more likely that you're projecting strawmen intentions onto policies.

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

#109

Post by gmadsen »

umeshunni wrote: post #5
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #2

Sounds like business will be booming for temp agencies as well as janitorial and facilities maintenance contractors. Whatever the net positive here is wholly negated by the number of stable long term jobs that are going to go away and be replaced by whoever the body shop chooses to send that day. Working for these middle men really sucks compared to working for whoever the service is being provided for (and I say tha…

More likely, this will just result in businesses continuing to leave San Francisco. The pandemic has given most companies a good reason to do so already and my bet is on most of them not returning to their overpriced San Francisco headquarters when this is eventually over.

I don't understand why this is said as a negative.

Tech needs to expand to other parts of the country. If SF wants high taxes, so be it, let all participate in the competition of where to be located.

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

#110

Post by tomjakubowski »

toast0 wrote: post #77
textech wrote: post #31

San Francisco is the 16th largest city by population and has a budget of around 14 billion which is like 6 or 7 times larger than many cities with much bigger population. This is just a badly run city and throwing more money at their problems isn't going to help them.

San Francisco is a combined city and county (the only one in California), so its budget includes things that would be in county budgets for places like Los Angeles and San Jose. For example, SF MTA is part of the SF budget, but LA MTA is a county agency, and isn't part of the LA city budget.

Seems like a fair comparison to make would be with NYC, whose city government similarly subsumes the counties/boroughs. NYC's per capita budget is about 2/3 of SF's; there may be economies of scale and other non-linear contributors at play with NYC's 10x larger population, or maybe SF is just less efficient.

edit: NYC's MTA is funded separately, including huge state contributions, so this is a terrible comparison. Let this comment be a reminder of the difficulty in comparing municipal budgets.

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