Here Come The IPOs And Here Comes A Proposal To Tax Them In San Francisco

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Trisha Thadani
Photo: Lyft co-founders John Zimmer, center left, and Logan Green, center right, attend Lyft’s IPO event in Los Angeles on March 29, 2019. (Ringo H.W. Chiu, Associated Press)

A lot of San Francisco companies are preparing to go public, and one city supervisor wants to tax them to offset the “negative impacts” that the sudden injection of wealth is expected to have on the city.

Supervisor Gordon Mar’s solution is a proposed tax on stock-based compensation that he revealed Wednesday.

“This is an important moment for us as a city to really reflect on what has played out in the last decade with the tech boom,” he said. “And how that has played such a direct and indirect role in so many of the challenges that we are having to grapple with in the city, whether that’s affordability or traffic congestion.”

Mar proposed placing a 1.12% payroll tax on stock-based compensation on the November ballot. Combined with the existing 0.38% payroll tax rate, the new tax would restore San Francisco’s old payroll tax rate of 1.5%, which San Francisco voters reduced in favor of a gross receipts tax in 2011.

The proposal comes shortly after two major tech companies, Lyft and Pinterest, made their Wall Street debuts. Uber is expected to thunder into the public market this year with its reported $100 billion valuation.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Here-come-the-IPO-s-and-here-comes-a-proposal