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Stripe to move to South San Francisco

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#141

Post by refurb »

sharpneli wrote: post #137
abalone wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly why this tax dodge is such a low integrity move for Stripe. All their SF employees will remain in SF, but Stripe won't pay the corporate taxes to offset their impact on the housing market, transit infrastructure, etc.

Doesn’t SF have some kind of municipal tax that the employees pay? I work in a different city where I live. But pay ~20% municipal tax (not US) that pays for infra etc that I use.

The employees who continue living in SF would continue to pay property taxes (through rent or directly) and sales taxes.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#142

Post by ceejayoz »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #87
lukeschlather wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a credit card that gives me 1.5% cash back on every transaction. I'm reading that Visa typically charges 2.3% to merchants, and Stripe charges 2.9%, ignoring per-transaction fees. So Stripe itself probably gets around 0.6% of each transaction, and at least on average 1% of each transaction goes to cardholder bonuses, and the card issuer gets around 1.3%. Of course both Stripe and the issuer have some fraud pre…

Your conflating fees charged to Merchants (by processors) and rewards offered to Card Holders (by issuers). While often the same bank performs, or is a partial owner involved in, both processing and issuing, the percentages you quote are largely disjoint. > I'm reading that Visa typically charges 2.3% to merchants ... The Discount Rate[0] a Merchant pays varies significantly based on the line-of-business, charge-back…

Interchange fees are higher on premium (rewards) cards. The merchant may contractually pay a fixed percentage that accounts for the expected mix of cards, but those rewards absolutely come from merchant fees.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#143

Post by sharpneli »

refurb wrote: post #141
sharpneli wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t SF have some kind of municipal tax that the employees pay? I work in a different city where I live. But pay ~20% municipal tax (not US) that pays for infra etc that I use.

The employees who continue living in SF would continue to pay property taxes (through rent or directly) and sales taxes.

Yeah. So they would pay for their impact, assuming the amount is enough.

Here municipal tax income is ridiculously higher than the corporate tax for municipalities. But the reason is that a corporation does not require healthcare, the person who lives in a municipality does and receives it from their own municipality etc.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#144

Post by refurb »

dmode wrote: post #62

As someone who has worked in South SF for years, it is pretty bad for employees. It is a cultural wasteland with few restaurants or interesting things to do. Transit is also poor as both BART and Caltrain are in awkward locations. And the fog is worse. This will be like Uber’s move to Oakland, which got rolled back pretty quickly

Meh. I’ve worked there as well and I think SSF has a lot of potential and it’s clear why:

- SSF has been welcoming new housing (see multistory apartments going up along highway)

- SSF has been welcoming businesses. The new biotech clusters are truly shocking, I’d guess another 5 million sq ft of office/lab space is new or under way. Genentech just submitted a plan to double their foot print.

- it has a decent commercial strip, obviously nothing compared to SF, but how could it be

- it has both a Caltrain and BART station, but your point is true about the locations not being ideal

If you’re a 20-something looking for cool restaurants and an ideal car-less life, then yeah, SF is better, but for the remaining 80% of the population, SSF offers a lot.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#145

Post by kevingadd »

nindalf wrote: post #129
abalone wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working to reduce office space That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction. We already have way too few houses, especially low-income housing.[1] Which is what makes Stripe's move here particularly low integrity: they'll have all the housing impact on SF without paying any of the corporate taxes. From your own source: "A separate economic feasibility…

> SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction And also making the assumption that only people who work in San Fransisco will live in San Fransisco? Because those Stripe employees who live in SF right now are likely not going to change their apartments. They'll continue living where they are, except now SF now longer benefits from the taxes that Stripe would otherwise have paid.

What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? All you can really do is build more housing (to fix housing undersupply caused by the excess office space) and limit growth of office space (to prevent the imbalance from getting worse).

The fact that companies can open up offices somewhere else shouldn't be very surprising, and it shouldn't be shocking that people will choose to live where they already live unless their commute gets too long and they can afford to move.

I just don't see what you expect SF leadership to do about this that doesn't fit into the two categories I mentioned, other than give up.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#146

Post by kevingadd »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138
abalone wrote: post #115

This blows, not so much because Stripe is leaving SF, but because it's going just over the border for tax purposes so 100% of employees who live in SF will stay in SF. The company just won't pay their fair share to the city to offset their impact. The line about this being about space and not taxes is hard to believe.[1] And for good reason. Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy of the reporti…

> Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy of the reporting threshold I don’t get the sense that San Francisco’s homeless problem can be solved by throwing dollars at it. San Francisco chooses high housing prices by restricting construction. Its NIMBYs block tackling its homelessness problem. Money won’t change those choices by San Francisco’s voters. It will just swell another city bureaucracy.

Both things can be true: NIMBYs are contributing to skyrocketing housing prices (and thus a growth in homelessness), AND essential city/county/state services require tax dollars.

I can think of plenty of things that SF locals complain about when I talk to them that would be mitigated by more tax dollars spent by the appropriate agencies. If your argument is that SF local government is a black hole that spends 0% of its tax income on important programs, then that's another matter but requires a bit more support...

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#147

Post by paulie_a »

Bombthecat wrote: post #116
paulie_a wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sample size is small but a company that raised 40 million and the CEO is considering leaving sv because his wife need to make rent with a roommate is not a great sign of the real estate. Sv isn't special. People are going to other tech hubs which are sprouting like crazy. Sv was when it made products. But sass can be done anywhere. People are leaving sv and housing prices are the reason. It's going to lead to brai…

I doubt that prices lead to brain drain. Sure there is a guy or two who will walk away. But I know more then a few people who are like: more then 2/3 of my pay to live in the city? No. Problem! Living in the city is super important!

I've seen it first hand with incredibly talented people that hated living in the city. There are plenty of tech hubs elsewhere. Sv isn't special. 2/3 of your pay is a bad decision unless you are being paid 600k+

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#148

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kevingadd wrote: post #145
nindalf wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction And also making the assumption that only people who work in San Fransisco will live in San Fransisco? Because those Stripe employees who live in SF right now are likely not going to change their apartments. They'll continue living where they are, except now SF now longer benefits from the taxes that Stripe would otherwise have paid.

What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? All you can really do is build more housing (to fix housing undersupply caused by the excess office space) and limit growth of office space (to prevent the imbalance from getting worse). The fact that companies can open up offices somewhere else shouldn't be very surprising, and it shouldn't be shocking that people will choose to live where they already live unle…

> What alternative solution actually fixes this, though?

Lower the cost of building housing. Streamline permits, zoning, and environmental review. Publicly commit, in other words, to driving down housing prices over a decade. (Note: not land prices! That’s the compromise.) This makes it cheaper to...

Build enough shelters for the transient homeless population. Now that they’re a stable problem, we can focus on the gritty bits.

Fund mental-health intervention for the permanently homeless so afflicted. And there has to be an element of coercion. Leaving the mentally ill to waste on the street isn’t compassion, it’s dereliction.

Fund drug-addiction intervention for the permanently homeless so afflicted. Carrot is clean places to use, seek counselling and get preventative medical care. Stick has to be arresting (and preferably transferring to clinics, not prisons) public users of hard, illicit drugs.

With the above in place, encampments can be humanely cleared and/or relocated. It also lets law enforcement tackle the minority of the homeless who are threatening, violent or thieving, a minority that creates most of the problems for other San Franciscans.

(Oh, and regional transit co-operation. If you make it easier for people to get around the Bay Area, they don’t have to stack up on each other. Why is the Caltrain a single trunk? Where is the network of every-fifteen-minutes ferries? Why is the BART so loud and expensive?)

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#149

Post by dawg- »

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you.

I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the bay area by moving to a lower cost of living area where mid-level employees can afford to buy an actual house relatively close to work? And they could pull a mini-Amazon and get some sweet tax breaks to boot. Is there some hidden reason that companies like this insist on staying in the same area despite the many potential advantages of looking elsewhere?

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#150

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kevingadd wrote: post #146
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy of the reporting threshold I don’t get the sense that San Francisco’s homeless problem can be solved by throwing dollars at it. San Francisco chooses high housing prices by restricting construction. Its NIMBYs block tackling its homelessness problem. Money won’t change those choices by San Francisco’s voters. It will just swell another city bureaucracy.

Both things can be true: NIMBYs are contributing to skyrocketing housing prices (and thus a growth in homelessness), AND essential city/county/state services require tax dollars. I can think of plenty of things that SF locals complain about when I talk to them that would be mitigated by more tax dollars spent by the appropriate agencies. If your argument is that SF local government is a black hole that spends 0% of i…

> NIMBYs are contributing to skyrocketing housing prices (and thus a growth in homelessness), AND essential city/county/state services require tax dollars

Until the NIMBYs are confronted, throwing money at the homeless problem, best case, randomly burns cash. (More likely, it enriches the politically connected i.e. those same NIMBYs.)

You can’t build enough shelters, nor build them or staff them economically, without solving that problem. You can dance around the permanent population, but you run into the same issue with mental-health and drug clinics. The NIMBYism makes the whole enterprise less effective to the NIMBYs’ benefit.

TL; DR This tax looks like another way for San Francisco to dodge confronting its landowning elite.

(Note: this isn’t a broadside against local taxation. It’s a complaint about this specific tax. San Francisco’s root problem is it refuses to build.)

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