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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

#291

Post by heavyset_go »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #117
heavyset_go wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. The purported reasons to leave were already on the table before the pandemic hit, but they were not enough to do so when compared to the reasons for staying. The pandemic is relatively temporary, and once it is over, those reasons for staying will still be on the table.

> The pandemic is relatively temporary Until the next ones comes. That could be in 1 year or 100 years. No one knows. Reminds me of the repeated hurricanes that drive people out of coastal areas.

> Reminds me of the repeated hurricanes that drive people out of coastal areas.

People still live in coastal areas, and rich people continue to build lavish vacation homes on the coast despite the fact that they're washed away by storms every couple of decades. Part of being rich is not having to worry about money, which is why many rich people live in cities, states and countries that tax them more: the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs. I think you can draw parallels between that and companies choosing to remain in cities for similar reasons despite some drawbacks existing.

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

#292

Post by rattray »

I actually think things like this might be really good for the business culture of San Francisco.

For a while, SF was a popular place to start a new company, but all established CA tech firms were down on the peninsula or in the south bay.

Some of those startups got big, and some of the big firms opened SF offices to compete for talent.

Now, it's hard to compete for talent in SF if you're starting out - you have to compete with the Ubers and Airbnb's as well as Google and FB.

Taxes like this will push more of "big tech" out of the city (eg Stripe moving to South San Francisco) and free up more breathing room for young startups.

I guess I take it as a given that this is better for SF, but others may disagree or need convincing.

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

#293

Post by sokoloff »

e12e wrote: post #275
sokoloff wrote: 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.

> Outsource the lowest paid workers to a subcontractor So, then the sub contractor pays the taxes and invoice you with mark-up? Because those companies have ceos too? I think this is rather fascinating. Assume a de-facto minimum wage of 10 dollars an hour, 2000 hours/year for 20k/year lower bound. 200 times that is 4M usd/year in compensation for a single individual. Does seem wierd to see such a big difference in ca…

I don't see the reason that the contracting firm CEO would likely clear $2M/yr as a low-risk, mostly undifferentiated supplier of office services. (That’s where the markup to the clients comes from, not the tax.)

But if the tax does become a problem, split into OfficeServicesA and OfficeServicesB corps and let your clients pick which one they'd like to hire. Or have your spouse or family member do some of the administrative work (for business continuity reasons) and split the comp.

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

#295

Post by stainforth »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #283
bduerst wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Founders would likely be on the board and just give themselves different titles from CEO if they really cared, so it shouldn't impact startups.

The measure wasn't to tax based on CEO pay. It was based on the highest paid managerial employee. So title doesn't matter.

Just want to comment that thank god we can actually build rules that can't be loopholed.

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

#297

Post by Consultant32452 »

pydry wrote: post #243
Consultant32452 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I'd like to see them do is radically simplify the ability for regular people to start regular businesses. One thing we could do is pick some small industry and run experiments with it. An example might be food trucks. There's a lot of regulations around these today. As a thought experiment we could eliminate all sales tax, special licensing, etc. for food truck companies under a certain size (We don't McDon…

Concentration of market power and lack of risk capital, not regulation, is the primary inhibitor to normal people starting businesses.

If you could open up a "food truck" on the weekends with a Walmart camp stove and a trip to Costco you'd eliminate the concentration fo market power and lack of risk capital as problems.

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

#298

Post by jefftk »

bduerst wrote: post #239
dontreact wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that the performance of companies is driven by the CEO much more than the employees. If the Bay Area has great FANG companies because of talented workforce here, then CEOs will gladly take a pay cut to be able to employ the best workers.

Yep. Founders would likely be on the board and just give themselves different titles from CEO if they really cared, so it shouldn't impact startups.

It's "highest paid managerial employee" in the text, not CEO: https://sfelections.sfgov.org/sites/default/files/Documents/...

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

#299

Post by strawberrypuree »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #188

It will work out well fiscally because giant companies will suck it up and pay, but it looks like a bad strategy from a forward-looking point of view. You want to incentivize future growth too, and you want to make sure that 20 years down the line, you have the new FAANGs of the world giving you millions in tax dollars, because history has shown that the largest of companies can eventually die out, and tech is full o…

> You want to incentivize future growth too

I would say that SF doesn’t want to incentivize future growth. That’s the source of the inequality, right?

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

#300

Post by toyg »

forest_dweller wrote: post #254
bambax wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the eternal objection to measures like this. But if every city and every state implement this, where will they go? And even if not, will they actually move? Will companies move? Time will tell but it seems very doubtful.

> This is the eternal objection to measures like this. But if every city and every state implement this, where will they go? To another country. The world is a big place, there are also a number of tax havens that are relics of the British Empire, there will be other countries which will quite happily have large tech business move there. None of these measures have the intended consequence (usually the opposite happe…

I keep waiting for the tech scene to explode in Grand Cayman or something, but it doesn't seem to be happening for some reason. It's all just lawyers and scammers.
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