The voters of San Francisco will decide on a ballot initiative in November to tax businesses more in order to increase spending on a homelessness program.
The initiative, if passed, would tax companies’ revenue above $50 million each year about a half a percent. The tax would hit the tech-heavy industry in Silicon Valley the most, with more than 1,000 businesses earning more than $50 million a year.
The tax would raise about $300 million a year — doubling the amount of money the city already spends on homelessness, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
“I think the city is really ready for this,” said a San Francisco small business owner and one of three petitioners on the measure, Christin Evans. “We have a lot of momentum behind us, and more than a majority of the voting population is renters. We’re polling very well.”
San Francisco is apparently drowning in human feces, San Francisco Democratic Mayor London Breed told KNTV in an interview Friday.
“There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here,” Breed said. “That is a huge problem and we are not just talking about from dogs — we’re talking about from humans.” (RELATED: SF Mayor Says Her City Is Drowning In Poop: ‘There’s More Feces … Than I’ve Ever Seen’)
The city of Seattle once planned a similar tax on businesses that made $20 million or more in annual sales, but after Amazon paused construction of a new building, the city ended up voting against the legislation, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported.
Seattle’s proposal was to add a “head tax” — a tax of 26 cents per employee, per hour for Seattle-based companies. Amazon’s stand against that tax caused an uproar from big labor unions, culminating in protests outside Amazon headquarters. Nevertheless, the city decided not to add the tax.
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