

 San Francisco Sends Problematic Gross Receipts Tax to November Ballot - rdl
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/san-francisco-sends-problematic-gross-receipts-tax-november-ballot

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rdl
I still have no idea why SF went with a gross receipts tax vs. an income tax.
I don't like paying taxes, but an SF-specific income tax (business and
personal, including people who commute in) does seem a lot more fair than
either payroll or gross receipts.

The argument against income tax is that it's hard to administer, but in SF,
they can just piggyback off the free tax returns from US IRS and CA FTB. To
make the correct income, it could probably be something like 0.1% or less.

This is surprising because the proponents of this tax (SF.Citi, Ron Conway et
al) are really smart.

(One of the only bad things about Washington State is the B&O tax, which I
also think should be replaced with another form of tax making at least the
same revenue, although at the state level, there's an argument about
collection and administration cost. Still, they can just piggyback on the
federal returns, or even better, just raise sales and property tax, or other
inexpensive to collect taxes.)

