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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

#301

Post by rbranson »

macspoofing wrote: post #158
kmtrowbr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

> 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.

This is quite the ad hominem. I may have missed it, but I'm not sure where OP said anything about density or housing. Is there something wrong with not wanting the city that you love to be invaded by the human version of a swarm of locusts?

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

#302

Post by jonny_eh »

kelnos wrote: post #282
eloff wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree companies will just suck it up and pay it if they want to be in SF. But I don't think it will disincentive new companies starting out. They have a hundred other concerns more important than how the CEO will be taxed if they one day become huge and the CEO has extremely high compensation. It won't even factor into the decision of where to locate the company. Also, you should notice most highly compensated CEOs…

> Simple capital gains or dividends are the favourite forms of compensation for founders. The new law includes equity comp in the calculation. Not sure how or if they'll amortize founder equity over many years, though; they may just consider the value in the year it's granted or the year it vests.

Does founder equity even count as "comp"?

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

#303

Post by burkaman »

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…

What makes you think the very slight disincentive to future startups outweighs the hundreds of millions in health services funding? Remember that healthcare has a compounding positive effect, because healthy people have an easier time contributing to society, and unhealthy people are more likely to need public services.

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

#304

Post by heavyset_go »

macspoofing wrote: post #158
kmtrowbr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

I see nothing in the OP's post that suggests that they're against re-zoning, building high density housing, or other measures to remove barriers against cheaper housing.

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

#305

Post by booboolayla »

strawberrypuree wrote: post #299
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?

I'd say you're right - they're trying to make everyone equal, not to grow further.

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

#306

Post by joshribakoff »

rattray wrote: post #278
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bill isn't about how CEOs will be taxed. It's about how their entire company will be taxed.

It's based on CEO pay, which doesn't apply to CEOs who are founders and get most of their "pay" in the form of appreciation of stock (rather than stock options/grants).

Would it be different if they liquidated and exchanged for an index fund or publicly traded ETF?

On the other hand, the law does cover gross receipts, so the act of “paying” the CEO in stocks is subject to taxation at the point in time the CEO receives it as part of their income.

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

#307

Post by 2arrs2ells »

jonny_eh wrote: post #302
kelnos wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simple capital gains or dividends are the favourite forms of compensation for founders. The new law includes equity comp in the calculation. Not sure how or if they'll amortize founder equity over many years, though; they may just consider the value in the year it's granted or the year it vests.

Does founder equity even count as "comp"?

The founder's original equity shouldn't count as compensation (it's purchased at time of incorporation at fair market value).

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

#308

Post by forest_dweller »

toyg wrote: post #300
forest_dweller wrote: post #254

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? 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.

Gibraltar has plenty of tech companies for financial and gambling. Singapore is the same but I am not sure about how the tax works there.

In any event I am not saying companies will move there necessarily (it was just an example I took off the top of my head) but they will move parts of the business around to be tax efficient. I do it with my own tiny business to be tax efficient.

As I said the world is a big place and companies will just move somewhere else if they deem it to be worth the move.

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

#309

Post by GhostVII »

San Francisco's solution to everything seems to be to just keep raising taxes, and throwing money at things which don't work. At some point you have to realize that more money isn't always the solution, you actually have to fix your beurocracy. It's insane to me that the city with so many rich people and incredibly valuable companies is such a mess, your telling me that a small city with an incredibly wealthy population can't figure out how to keep the tenderloin from being full of tents and open drug use? Or get some form of functioning public transit? Pretty pathetic.

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

#310

Post by gcheong »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #162
gcheong wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you missed parent’s point, which is that companies will have (yet another) incentive to replace their lowest paid workers with contractors. First they came for the janitors, but I did not speak up, for I was not a janitor...

So how does one "speak up" as a janitor then? I think as long as maximizing shareholder value is the dominant incentive of corporations, your job will always be at risk of being outsourced unless you have either a clear competitive advantage or a strong collective bargaining ability.
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