undefined | Better HN

0 pointsabalone6y ago0 comments

The gross receipts tax was Jack Dorsey's idea. As CEO of Square he lobbied for and received a switch to the gross receipts tax in 2012.[1] He only started complaining about "fairness" when it became about helping the homeless.

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/SF-Citi-video-plugs-...

0 comments

ergocoder6y ago

You merely mentioned fairness, but you didn't mention which aspect.

Jack has been vocal about wanting to pay tax by revenue (or whatever way) to the city. The point that he objects is that Square pays tax more than Saleforce, when Saleforce's revenue is way way more than Square's.

This is an example of US political debate.

Everyone immediately accuses the person of being evil (i.e. not wanting to pay tax and of hating homeless). But nobody actually answers why it makes sense for Square to pay more tax than Saleforce.

gamblor9566y ago

It makes perfect sense.

Square has the one office in SF, so essentially all of its gross proceeds arise from that office and are subject to the tax.

Salesforce has offices everywhere and a substantial amount of its revenues come from the work of employees outside of San Francisco. This revenue should not be subject to the SF gross revenues tax (and it would be illegal for SF to tax such income).

The question boils down to this: is the disparity in taxes reasonable given the SF-based gross proceeds generated by Square and Salesforce?

matahwoosh6y ago

You're incorrect, Square has non-SF offices, too. I think @nrp has put it well in his comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21342101. Square is categorized differently than Salesforce by SF tax law and pays a different proportion of taxes than Salesforce.

EDIT: corrected username

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse