Muni Would Like To Ask You To Tax Yourself
Agency will ask board to consider sales, payroll, four other taxes Muni has no qualms about the "tax and spend liberal" label: after all, the...
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Xenu said:
April 15, 2010 2:01 PM
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FINALLY! All these service cuts + fare increases were getting out of hand.
John Murphy said:
April 15, 2010 2:05 PM
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Amusing. I can't figure how these taxes make more sense than meter extensions, which price a good and is thus nominally "optional", and which is good for business, which (drumroll please) brings in more sales taxes.
I can say this... other than the sales tax increase I would get a pretty good deal on this one. My wife and I share one car, we don't own property in SF, I don't work in SF, don't stay in hotels in SF.
And I have no idea what crack Ford is smoking that predicts a surplus in 2012.
Rick said:
April 15, 2010 2:07 PM
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and 60% of whichever tax increase will go towards funding the screwed-up work rules at SFMTA.
keep chanting with those fingers in your ears, Mr. Ford.
Akit said:
April 15, 2010 2:22 PM
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Wow, 10% local sales tax. On the brighter end, at least it will be easier to determine sales tax instead of this "point five" crap.
Makes Amazon sound more amusing every single day.
Alex Zepeda said:
April 15, 2010 2:57 PM
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Yeah. No fucking way. Before raising more revenue the MTA absolutely needs to address wasteful practices top to bottom. I'm fine with increased revenues going towards maintaining service and improving infrastructure... but what guarantee do we have that jacking up the sales tax will do any of that?
@AKit Slightly off-topic, but, the timetables are available on sfmta.com in the Google Transit format. Portland's TriMet has a neat open source webapp that you can use to make timetables from this data (likewise I hacked up a quick one to make some PDFs). Of course, I don't know if/when this will be updated for the May service gutting. I am also a bit cheesed that the MTA sees fit to pander to Google, but not make this readily available to the general public. As long as they're dubbing riders "customers" they might as well pull their heads outta their hindquarters a bit to realize that Google, as an entity, does not ride MUNI.
Kevin Montgomery said:
April 15, 2010 5:52 PM
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TAX CARS MORE (full disclosure: I don't drive).
That said, an across the board sales tax only makes the city more difficult to live in (as does a payroll tax) whereas the city's car culture is already well funded.
Pumpkin Pie said:
April 15, 2010 6:32 PM
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Wow, we tax haters have something in common with the Tea Party.
bloomsm said:
April 16, 2010 12:57 PM
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For those of you who slept through your Economics class in college, typically, raising taxes in a recession (for that is what we are in, regardless of your 401k performance) slows growth and makes matters worse. Slowing growth (for example, jacking tourists for 15% hotel tax plus 10% sales tax) when you need growth, is just stupid. It provides less funding to Muni and creates a cycle of higher taxes, slow growth, and service cuts.
Having the highest-sales tax among major US cities is not a plus. It hurts the poor worst of all (because they can least afford it); and it hurts business that people could avoid (like, Trader Joe's in Daly City is the same distance from my house as an SF location). A parcel tax will not pass because the people who are being asked to fund Muni via parcel tax (i.e., property owners) consistently reject such taxes.
Please review the SFWeekly's excellent piece by Greg Dewar on the Muni Death Spiral. You can tax fucking fresh air and it won't help the Muni. An amazing analysis here: http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-04-14/news/the-muni-death-spiral