Posted on 12/11/2019 12:19:33 PM PST by karpov
If you tax something, you generally get less of it. That logic undergirds a San Francisco ballot measure that would tax vacant storefronts in hopes of filling them with thriving retail businesses.
Supporters of the idea argue that the city is facing an epidemic of unused commercial space, caused in part by speculating landlords keeping empty units in the hopes of securing higher-paying tenants. Taxing vacant properties would encourage these landlords to get off the sidelines and give business tenants a chance, the thinking goes.
A vacancy tax would encourage "bad actor landlords to get off their duffs" and lease out their properties, said Aaron Peskin, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors and the author of the proposed vacancy tax, according to the San Francisco Examiner.
Peskin has been pushing versions of the vacancy tax since January. In late November, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to place it on the March 2020 ballot.
If approved by voters, it would go into effect January 2021.
The tax would apply to the non-residential properties in the city's neighborhood commercial districts that remain vacant for over 182 non-consecutive days in a given year.
The tax rate would start out at $250 per linear foot of storefront that's vacant in 2021, rising to $500 for properties that are vacant in that year and the next, and maxing out at $1,000 per linear foot for storefronts that are vacant for three years in a row.
The tax will bring in very little money. The city's controller estimated it would generate at most $5 million, and that was when the proposed tax rate was a flat $1,000 per linear foot for all vacant storefronts.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
“To fight Global Warming, we are going to tax the number of times you exhale”
You can see it coming....
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
Human excrement outside the front door couldn’t possibly have an impact on those not rentable buildings...
So, if, for whatever reason, you choose to leave a storefront vacant, as the owner of the property, you will be hit with another tax for that?
The LEFT does not understand LIBERTY at all.
No, they want to force you to rent it out at a lower price - so maybe a tattoo parlor or storefront “church” can move in...
Powerful stupid! If the store owner has an empty storefront, there are probably no customers, so no money to pay another stupid tax.
It just dawned on me. San Franscicko should just tax feces on the streets.
A Poop Tax, if you will.
While they’re about taxing empty storefronts, maybe they can tax the lost revenue they aren’t collecting by Conventions not coming to the Shitty by the Bay due to poop.
Oracle for example.
There are elephants in the room.
The encroachment of homeless and drug addicts and other unsavory people, are impacting businesses. And some businesses shut down and space remains vacant, due to the unsavory characters.
It’s not politically correct to talk about, but, for every vacant commercial space, there is a reason that space is vacant.
Vacant or boarded up commercial properties, are often found in bad neighborhoods. It’s a sad fact of life, but a fact of capitalist life nonetheless. For every property, there is a reason why it’s vacant. There is a backstory for every property, as to why it was once occupied by a going concern business, and why that business no longer operates there.
That is what they WANT, but they can’t force me to rent it.. they TAX ME for not doing so, REGARDLESS OF MY REASON FOR NOT DOING IT....
The assumption of course is that storefronts do not get rented because landlords just want more money for them.
Sometimes a landlord just has no desire to deal with retail tenants, for whatever reason, or tenants at all.
Or just tax the homeless. Vacant storefronts earn on money. Just like homeless people earn no money (usually).
If they want fewer homeless, tax them. Isn’t that the gist of the first part of the article?
Not just the city ...but CA in general
A newly formed coalition of public employee unions and other liberal groups, including many churches, launched a campaign Thursday to put a revision on California's 2016 ballot that would remove Proposition 13's protections from commercial properties. Under current law, dating back to Prop 13’s passage in 1978, property taxes are only reassessed upon transfer of ownership or, if title is held in a legal entity, change of control (obtaining a greater-than-50% ownership interest) in the legal entity. Once re-assessed, values cannot increase more than 2% annually. The proposed measure would remove Proposition 13’s limits on what the organization considers to be commercial property – industrial, retail and office complexes, mostly – while leaving them in place for owner-occupied homes, residential rental properties and agricultural land.
According to The Sacramento Bee, if enacted, the Proposition 13 revision would raise as much as $9 billion a year that advocates say are needed to adequately finance schools and improve local government services. However, the organization, Make It Fair, headed by unions, including the California Teachers Association and the Service Employees International Union, leading the campaign will face stiff opposition from a business-backed coalition called Californians to Stop Higher Property Taxes. Business leaders say that by continuing to raise taxes, the state is forcing businesses out of California, and they’re taking jobs with them. Critics of Prop 13 say that business properties rarely change hands, and when they do the deals are structured to avoid triggering an upgrade of taxable values by never transferring more than 50 percent ownership in one transaction. Last year, business groups and some tax reformers agreed to a revision of those standards that stopped short of a “split roll” that would remove all limits on commercial property. But the agreement fell apart later and never was enacted.
“If you go out of business due to high taxes and your store front closes we will tax you even more!!”
That sums up what I’m getting from this story.
Instead why not attack the real problems of vagrancy, communicable diseases, and vile sanitation by heavily penalizing public defecation, urination, illegal camping, and shoplifting by providing Sheriff Joe style jail facilities for violators and forcing them to clean up their own messes as part of their sentences?? All of SF would suddenly become much more tourist attractive and vacancies would disappear.
Also why not rezone vacant commercial properties as residential to help relieve the SF housing shortage? About 70 years ago when I was a kid in Chicago there were many buildings with commercial businesses on their lower floors and apartments on the upper floors.
In other news; The city plans to tax donuts that haven’t been made yet to encourage Donut shops to sell more donuts. We can no longer accept the excuse that no-one wants to buy all those yet to be cooked donuts.
Insanity, but then this is san franfreako. It’s empty because the business closed but the lease didn’t run out. There is no way this will improve the business climate. It will discourage people from starting a business.
Since the business has closed, the tax money will come out of where it always comes from - the pockets of the owner.
The first thought that came to me after reading the headline.
It will encourage landlords to sell their buildings, that’s what it will do. The new landlords will still have the same problems as the old landlords in getting retail tenants.
I foresee a lot of accidental fires in the future. Course I have not stayed in a Motel 6.
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