CHANGE MY LOCATION
Local
California News
Multimedia News
Ballot measure would give small business a tax break
SEE THE LATEST ON THIS STORY
Related Topics: SAN FRANCISCO
SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - Thousands of small businesses would see a payroll tax break under a measure submitted Tuesday for the November ballot by Mayor Gavin Newsom.
The business community often complains that City Hall keeps increasing the costs of doing business, from laws requiring paid sick leave to San Francisco’s relatively higher minimum wage.
Currently, 17,000 businesses do not pay San Francisco’s 1.5 percent payroll tax under The City’s existing exemption for businesses that have a payroll less than $167,000. Newsom’s measure would increase the payroll exemption to those businesses with a payroll of $250,000 or less.
Additionally, the measure would decrease the 1.5 percent payroll tax to 1 percent for those businesses with a payroll of more than $250,000 and as much as $400,000.
“We recognize that there’s been a lot of hardships placed on businesses in terms of the mandates that we’ve set coming out of City Hall,” Newsom told The Examiner. “I think this is absolutely appropriate relief for those same small businesses.”
The total cost to The City would be about $10 million in lost payroll taxes. Newsom said the shortfall would be filled by taxes raised through the passage of a charter amendment by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.
The charter amendment would close a payroll tax loophole that doesn’t tax all the income of partners in such businesses as law firms and architectural firms. Peskin’s measure is expected to raise at least $20 million annually.
Comments from Examiner Readers
1:59 AM MST on Thu., Jun. 19, 2008 re: "Tenderloin community court may go before voters"
Report as inappropriate
11:59 AM MST on Wed., Jun. 18, 2008
re: "Tenderloin community court may go before voters"
Report as inappropriate
10:44 AM MST on Wed., Jun. 18, 2008
re: "Tenderloin community court may go before voters"
Report as inappropriate
10:33 AM MST on Wed., Jun. 18, 2008
re: "Tenderloin community court may go before voters"
Report as inappropriate
9:50 AM MST on Wed., Jun. 18, 2008
re: "Tenderloin community court may go before voters"
Report as inappropriate
9:48 AM MST on Wed., Jun. 18, 2008
re: "Tenderloin community court may go before voters"
Report as inappropriate
10:38 AM MST on Wed., Jun. 11, 2008
re: "Peninsula parks lose extra green"
Report as inappropriate
7:34 AM MST on Wed., Jun. 11, 2008
re: "Hand count of June 3 ballots to begin this week"
Report as inappropriate
1:13 PM MST on Fri., Jun. 6, 2008
re: "Voter fatigue produces weak turnout in S.F."
Report as inappropriate
2:41 PM MST on Thu., Jun. 5, 2008
re: "Ground cleared for development"
Report as inappropriate
12:24 AM MST on Thu., Jun. 5, 2008
re: "Ground cleared for development"
Report as inappropriate
12:41 PM MST on Wed., Jun. 4, 2008
re: "Candidates pass judgment on court’s incumbent"
Report as inappropriate
12:32 PM MST on Wed., Jun. 4, 2008
re: "Voter fatigue in Peninsula produces weak turnout"
Report as inappropriate
12:56 PM MST on Thu., May. 22, 2008
re: "Candidates pass judgment on court’s incumbent"
Report as inappropriate
King of the Dynasty said:
Can't wait to vote for Daly & Peskin's protege' David Chiu for District #3 supervisor. It'll be like Peskin never left.
8 agree | 8 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Gretchen said:
What? This is STILL an issue? I can't believe it. The public has overwhelmingly given its support to having a community court but Chris Daly continues to fight it. Get over it Daly - SF is moving into the 21st century whether you and your fellow "progressives" like it or not! We taxpayers WANT to clean up our city! We taxpayers DEMAND that SF address the Quality of Life issues. What part of "taxpayer" don't you understand? Once again the BOS is trying to stop progress. I still don't understand why they call themselves "progressives" when all they want to do is stop progress. Give me (and all the other taxpaying voters) a break and let SF progress into the clean, safe, beautiful city that it can be. This shouldn't even have to be a ballot measure - it should be just business as usual - and it would be in any normal city. "Treatment on Demand" my a**. Daly just wants to give away our tax dollars to his pet projects, not for the good of the city!
9 agree | 7 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
This campaign will cost more than the court. How about you let the pet project go and focus on how the City's existing services can be improved.
8 agree | 10 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Yes to the Community Court! said:
It appears that Chris Daly and his comrades at the Coalition on Homelessness prefer to maintain the status quo in the Tenderloin, the filthiest, most drug-saturated and crime-ridden neighborhood in the city. Daly's been supervisor of that District (#6) for years, and has yet to make a single positive change in the area, which he views as his own personal fiefdom. Residents of the Tenderloin, however, have had enough, and support the community court by a wide margin. If this measure indeed appears on the ballot in November, I for one will work tirelessly to ensure that it is approved by voters. Maintaining the status quo in the Tenderloin will only ensure more stabbings, shootings and drug overdoses. The residents of that neighborhood, and the city, deserve better than Daly, the condo-dwelling pseudo-socialist.
12 agree | 7 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
Tenderloin community court may go before voters. YES!
11 agree | 8 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
""Voters in November may decide what City Hall politicians could only fight about: whether to spend millions of dollars annually on a new kind of court designed to bring much-needed help to those arrested in the crime-plagued Tenderloin."" Most excellent! Of course we know Daly will not sign the "opposing" argument on the ballot since that will surely mean this measure will pass! "Daly’s proposed “Treatment on Demand Act” would require The City to maintain “an adequate level” of free and low-cost substance-abuse and residential treatment slots to meet demand, set by the number of those treated and seeking treatment each year."" What a specious offering by this person. Yes people want help, yet after living in this area for the past 5 years and having been born and raised in The City I can tell you that there are people out there who DO WANT NOR SEEK help.
9 agree | 8 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
san carlos has lost ALL of its GREEN when it comes to recycling. It should loose ALL funding from california zero waste program !
8 agree | 6 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Albert Franklin said:
Papan should go ahead and give the devil his due. If the demon is will to exterminate his black Christian relative in Europe he has his reward. If the devil can then come to America with a 31 October date for All Saints Day while the Aztec's celebrate the very next days 1, 2, and 3 November with Days of the Dead where Mexico's navy and the invention of silverware were stolen as easily as Jerry Brown picking the pocket of San Mateo County for $2 trillion. He has his reward. My count on all of this is strike 3! You have your reward!
9 agree | 9 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
Voter fatigue? political disengagement? Probably nothing which can't be cured by living under an autocratic dictator for an election cycle or two.
8 agree | 8 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
In the middle of an arguable recession and credit crisis, the voters have given, and if/when contracts are signed, legally bound a public entity, the City/Cnty of S.F. to give 770 acres of free land to a private company, Lennar Corp., in lieu of a better San Francisco. Wow, mark my words, we the taxpayers, will pay for this one. First of many thoughts which comes to mind - what happens in lieu of a Lennar bankruptcy? Second, huge redevelopment projects (i.e Fillmore? Yerba Buena?) created what has been described as modern, sterile, impersonal spaces with not much attention/connection to community - think SOMA devlopments in China Basin. It sounds to me like we are on the path to more of the same.
8 agree | 7 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
I hope Lennar will use what they have done in other counties in the Bay Area as a ref. guide on the Hunters Point project. What they have done there are some good stuff. I just hope they don't fall into the following of what kind of style and look city elected wants. Right now the Americanize Mediterranean & Tuscan style is very popular in Southen California, Vegas, Utha and Arizona, where the locals live. I think Lennar knows that very well, and have done that with new houses in Bay Area counties like Danville and San Jose. I hope that will do that to Hunters Point area on the housing. If they have build retail and commercial before, they should know that what works like the for example the Bay Point shopping center in San Mateo, The Gret Mall and the redeveloped Tanforan mall.IF City Hall officals want people from the Sunset District, South San Francisco and Daly City to go there then they have let that happen. So NO trying to be the west coast New York city. Not even as a ref. guid
15 agree | 8 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
If San Franciscans have any sense at all, they would not elect Stupidvisor Sandoval to the bench. He is politicizing the bench and judges are apolitical (they rule based on the law of the land). If he's interested in politics, he should run for some other mucky muck position in City Hall. Stay away from the courts! This coming from a guy who said the US does not need a military? And you want to elect that genius?
11 agree | 11 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Seven said:
We in San Francisco's Sunset District are also suffering from voter burnout.
12 agree | 11 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree
Examiner Reader said:
I am a lawyer in Los Angeles who has done civil litigation for 34 years. A couple of weeks ago, someone from an organization in San Francisco called me to ask about Gerardo Sandoval as a candidate for judge. I was told I was contacted because I formerly represented a party in an action in which Mr. Sandoval represented the other side and Mr. Sandoval had pointed to this action as a part of his experience. This inquiry prompted me to look up Mr. Sandoval's online campaign materials. I gather he is running on a platform of "diversity" and identity politics. I know nothing about the incumbent judge Mr. Sandoval is challenging. I do know about Mr. Sandoval. He will fully represent all that is mediocre and oblivious on the bench.
18 agree | 13 disagree
Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree