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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

#151

Post by bitwize »

thursday0987 wrote: post #131

San Franciso is a city, so I imagine what will happen is that companies will move out of the city limits and this new tax will be completely ineffective. Seriously, how hard is it to find a new office in Oakland or San Jose?

When Connecticut hiked its taxes, even long-standing businesses headquartered there, like GE, packed up and moved to Massachusetts. (You know you're doing something wrong when "Taxachusetts" is a relative tax haven compared to your state.)

So even if these changes were implemented statewide, it can be an impetus to leave. Laffer's curve is a bitch for the eat-the-rich crowd.

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

#152

Post by RangerScience »

LinuxBender wrote: post #32
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.

A law firm I use has been in SF for over 20 years. They just moved to a rough part of Oakland. The move was challenging for them and I know they would not have done it if they didn't have to.

Why did they have to move? This new law, or something else?

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

#153

Post by Alupis »

colordrops wrote: post #144
cody3222 wrote: post #121

This raises some interesting questions / side effects: 1) Companies may now have a direct incentive to have their lowest income earners be outsourced/contracted out to boost the median pay amount. 2) It was smart of them to include compensation such as stock options. However if a city starts to expect this income, it will all go away in recessions when CEO's stock options are not valuable. ie more money to the city i…

CEOs are all just going to move out of San Francisco.

And/Or move their companies too. Particularly all the "tech startups" that think they don't need physical office buildings anymore. For a lot of companies, SF is becoming difficult to justify.

Well-intended ideas, not fully thought out, leading to unintended consequences... nothing really new for SF.

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

#155

Post by gcheong »

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…

CEO compensation historically wasn’t orders of magnitude greater than worker pay like it has ballooned to today and there were plenty of long term jobs. This just formalizes the idea that there shouldn’t be an egregious difference in compensation that was commonplace before the idea that a corporation’s sole purpose is to maximize shareholder value became the main driver of CEO compensation.

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

#156

Post by RangerScience »

dave_aiello wrote: post #148

Doesn't this type of tax violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to The Constitution, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause ?

IMO that's the same question as 'does a progressive tax violate the 14th'; here's a Quora: https://www.quora.com/Does-the-federal-government-violate-th...

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

#158

Post by macspoofing »

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…

>we've had the opposite problem: lots of highly paid tech firms moving into SF.

Quite the problem ... the kind of problem that multitudes of cities and regions in the world are desperately trying to recreate.

>This has changed the nature of San Francisco in a way that many dislike, including me.

This is where progressives don't live up to their name. The nature of cities is constant change. Meanwhile the activists are desperately trying to keep change to a minimum so that the character of neighborhoods never changes. It's an interesting dichotomy.

>because rents have gone up so much, and also it's just not as fun, it's crowded and stressed.

Rents will drop if you increase density ... but that would mean building higher density housing and thereby accepting that the character of cities and neighborhoods change.

>I am aware that I am a part of the problem: my wife and I are white, yuppie, dink tech workers. :)

The fact that you're white and a tech worker isn't the problem. It's that you had the opportunity to move to San Fransciso for work due to the tech boom, and now you're trying to pull the ladder up so others cannot do the same.

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

#159

Post by vmception »

Alupis wrote: post #153
colordrops wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs are all just going to move out of San Francisco.

And/Or move their companies too. Particularly all the "tech startups" that think they don't need physical office buildings anymore. For a lot of companies, SF is becoming difficult to justify. Well-intended ideas, not fully thought out, leading to unintended consequences... nothing really new for SF.

That’s because the “mostest wokest” dont live in SF long enough to be bothered by the consequences of their votes.

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

#160

Post by singron »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #139

The politicians have shown their hand by not designing this legislation to instead have companies pay their employees more. Why do I say that? It's currently cheaper to pay the tax than give the raises to your employees. So politicians have shown it's just a money grab _For the Government_ more than for the employees. Let's say I make $100 and the mean is $1. I'll pay 0.1% on tax payments.

It's a gross receipts tax on the business. E.g. so if you make $100, but the business has $1,000,000 in gross receipts, then 0.1% would be $1000 in taxes or 10x your total compensation. It's got teeth.
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