Mayor Lee Submits Business Tax Reform to Promote Job Growth, Supervisor Avalos Submits Competing Measure That Would Raise Taxes and Fees By Ten Percent.

For the past 6 months, Mayor Lee and Board President David Chiu have been working with the business community on an important reform to the San Francisco business tax structure that would eliminate the City’s payroll tax and move to a gross receipts tax. The Mayor’s proposal is the result of literally hundreds of meetings with business leaders and representatives and six months of constant work by the City controller’s office. The new structure would likely benefit industries like the restaurant industry, that have high labor costs in relation to overall revenue.

Supervisor Avalos’s measure would raise the taxes and fees paid by the San Francisco business community by 10% or more, endangering our already tenuous economic recovery efforts in San Francisco. Because the City is still 60,000 to 70,000 jobs below where we were 12 years ago, now is the time to focus on reforming our tax system to promote job growth.

The GGRA Board of Director’s strongly supports Mayor Lee’s efforts to reform the business tax code and is continuing to work with the Controller’s office and other members of the business community to ensure that the final version of the measure that will be submitted to voters for the November election is beneficial to the overall economy and does not disproportionately impact other vital San Francisco industries.

For a summary of the two proposals click here

To review the actual text of each proposal, you can follow the following links:
Link for the full text of the Mayor Lee and David Chiu’s proposal.
Link for the full text of Supervisor Avalos’s proposal.