This is not a tax cut. San Francisco is the only major city in the US that taxes the company for an employee's personal gain on stock options.
This is eliminating a tax that was very, very poorly thought out as it effectively precludes any company from going public in the city of San Francisco. A company doing an $100M IPO might effectively be required to pay all $100M raised to the city of San Francisco as tax on the stock options gains of employees.
Discuss the merits of tax cuts elsewhere -- this is an obvious situation where this tax never should have been in the first place, and will be doing a considerable amount of harm to San Francisco if it is not repealed.
If you're advocating the removal of a tax, then yes, it's a tax cut. Whether it does harm to San Francisco or not is absolutely worth discussing. Let's start by asking where the city will make up the revenues it loses from removing this tax. Or is your solution to lay off more teachers?
San Francisco does not currently enforce this tax, and it does not currently collect any revenues from it, so there is no revenue to be made up. No one was even aware of it until it was discovered recently.
If you want to blindly support any tax because it's a tax, and blindly hate any company that makes money because it's "an evil corporation", you are free to do so.
But it's abundantly clear by the facts in this situation that this is a net positive for San Francisco.
If you want to alienate people from your point of view, caricature their own views. The person you're responding to doesn't seem to support taxation for taxation's sake, and doesn't seem to believe companies that make money are "evil".
Yet, despite the taxes, companies keep starting up in San Francisco. Maybe some people in SF don't want a Google-plex in the city? If you want to argue that it is bad for the city, post commentary from someone who isn't an investor in startups.
I am not an investor in startups, I'm running one. I have the same perspective: We are more than happy to pay San Francisco's unusual payroll tax, but this tax on employee options would force us to move out of the city in a few years.
If your argument is that you don't want startups in San Francisco, that's a very fair position to hold, but it's not what we're discussing.
The likelihood that this tax would drive startups out of the entire SFBA seems very low. Meanwhile, the tiny city of San Francisco proper is likely to remain well stocked with upwardly mobile tech company employees whether their employers are in SOMA or San Mateo.
> The likelihood that this tax would drive startups out of the entire SFBA seems very low.
Absolutely agree. The likelihood that it would drive startups out of San Francisco proper is very high. We are discussing what the city of San Francisco needs to do to not force companies to move out of the city.
> Meanwhile, the tiny city of San Francisco proper is likely to remain well stocked with upwardly mobile tech company employees whether their employers are in SOMA or San Mateo.
Also likely, although there won't be as many of them. Another big issue is that the city of San Francisco will lose out on significant tax revenue from companies based here, since they will be forced to leave.
Wouldn't both proposals address that? One appears to want to repeal it entirely, while the other proposal would cap the tax at $750,000 annually, so both would remove the potential of owing $100m in taxes for an IPO.
This is eliminating a tax that was very, very poorly thought out as it effectively precludes any company from going public in the city of San Francisco. A company doing an $100M IPO might effectively be required to pay all $100M raised to the city of San Francisco as tax on the stock options gains of employees.
Discuss the merits of tax cuts elsewhere -- this is an obvious situation where this tax never should have been in the first place, and will be doing a considerable amount of harm to San Francisco if it is not repealed.