first published week of: 08/01/2016
Supervisor Eric Mar (center) is proposing a new tax on technology companies in San Francisco.
( Gabrielle Lurie, Special To The Chronicle)
The proposal championed by SF Supervisor Eric Mar would have imposed a 1.5 percent payroll tax on technology companies.
Highly paid tech workers are often blamed for the city’s housing crisis. Now, three supervisors want to levy a tax on technology companies in an effort to make them pay for the city’s two biggest woes: the high cost of housing and homelessness.
Dubbed the tech tax, the proposed November ballot measure would impose a 1.5 percent payroll tax on technology companies. That would be a big shift. In 2012, 71 percent of San Francisco voters supported a measure to eliminate the city’s payroll tax and replace it with a gross receipts tax.
The proposed measure has a lot of ifs, including whether it will even make the ballot. It has three co-sponsors — Supervisors Eric Mar, Aaron Peskin and David Campos — but needs the support of at least six to qualify.
That will be an uphill battle. None of the five moderate supervisors is likely to support it, and one of the six progressives, Jane Kim, may be unwilling to take on tech companies while she is running for state Senate.
Should the measure make it to the ballot and pass, the city controller’s office estimates it would generate about $115 million annually continued…