San Francisco's largest companies are now forced to pay a tax on homeless people

San Francisco voters on Tuesday approved a new corporate tax that will raise $ 300 million a year from the city's largest corporations and allocate them to homeless services.

Proposal C, as voters knew, represents the largest corporate tax increase in San Francisco history. The measure was adopted with 59.9% of the votes.

Although the tax is a local problem, it has garnered national attention after its most daring supporter, Salesforce's founder and co-CEO, Marc Benioff, began talking about social media to others. Titans from the tech world, including Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square. and Twitter.

San Francisco-born San Francisco-born Benioff, who is named after him in a children's hospital in the city, donated more than $ 7.8 million in personal and group funds to campaign for proposal C He celebrated the win on Tuesday night tweeting: San Francisco. "

While everyone involved expressed support for helping the homeless, Dorsey and other tech titans said they did not believe that proposal C was the right one. way to proceed.

The City's complex tax code means that Proposal C will affect financial services companies, such as Dorsey's Square and its competitor Stripe, disproportionately compared to other large San Francisco companies.

Salesforce, San Francisco's largest employer, would pay about $ 10 million a year, while Square, which is one-third the size of Salesforce, would pay more.

"We are happy to pay our taxes. We just want to be treated fairly with our counterparts, many of whom are 2 to 10 times larger than us, "Dorsey wrote on October 19." Otherwise, we do not know how to grow in the city. It is heartbreaking for us to love SF and continue to help it build it. "

Under proposal C, companies generating more than $ 50 million in gross annual revenues will now be taxed on gross annual revenue in San Francisco. The city already applies a tax on gross receipts, which is usually calculated by taking a company's overall business figure and multiplying it by a "distribution percentage," based on the category of business. ;activity. Depending on their category, companies could pay an additional tax of between 0.175% and 0.69%.

Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe, described proposal C as "well-intentioned" but added that it "does not accompany any systemic change or effective accountability".

Even the mayor of the city, London Breed, who ended up on a platform for solving the homelessness problem, opposed Proposition C because of the lack of accountability and controls available in his office .

Funding for homelessness services has "increased dramatically in recent years with no perceptible improvement in the situation," she said in a statement. "Before doubling the tax bill overnight, the Franciscans of San are entitled to the responsibility of the money they already pay."