From January to June 2026, a union-backed ballot measure branded as an 'Overpaid CEO Tax' was exposed as an 800% gross receipts tax increase that exempts Google, Meta, and Amazon while hammering Safeway, Walgreens, and Starbucks — stacked on top of a tax regime that already drove $400 billion in companies out of SF.
Read Top Post →The SF Chronicle proposed turning empty Embarcadero Center into a public art walkway. Marc Joffe of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association pointed out the obvious: the space isn’t empty because it lacks murals — it’s empty because businesses can’t afford SF’s tax burden. Meanwhile the “CEO tax” would stack an 800% rate hike on the existing gross receipts structure, making downtown recovery functionally impossible.
Jan 26, 2026 · 3 min
GrowSF revealed the consumer hit: because gross receipts taxes fall on total revenue, not profits, low-margin businesses like Safeway absorb the full 800% increase and pass it to shoppers. The Administrative Office Tax — based on SF payroll — also jumps 800%. The measure also breaks the business-labor compromise voters approved in earlier elections, reopening settled tax policy through the ballot box.
Jan 24, 2026 · 4 min
One day after the initial breakdown, the startup math got sharper: $10.4M in SF vs. $17,000 in San Jose for the same 250-person company. The city controller’s own report showed SF hits a hypothetical $30B tech firm with 20x more in local business taxes than Mountain View, 1,300x more than Sunnyvale. One-third of downtown office space sits empty, and the union coalition’s answer is to make the gap worse.
Jan 21, 2026 · 4 min
SF’s labor coalition filed for a June 2026 ballot measure they call the “Overpaid CEO Tax.” The name polled well, but the mechanism has nothing to do with CEO pay — it’s an 800% gross receipts tax increase on companies with 1,000+ employees and $1B+ revenue. A 250-employee startup pays $10.4M/year in SF vs. $3,600 in Sunnyvale. Schwab, Stripe, Square, and McKesson — $400B in market cap — already left.
Jan 20, 2026 · 4 min
