The Big Vote Is Today: Will San Francisco Hang on to Twitter?

It's more complex than that - TC's reporting isn't much better than that from the unions.<p>That part of SF Twitter is likely moving to (Market street between 6th &#38; Van Ness) is really blighted, most business left the area some time ago except for 2-bit retailers, and it has become a skeevy dump over a 20 year period. The tax break is for companies over a certain size who lease space for a minimum of 5 years; Twitter would be one beneficiary, but behind them is SF property management company Shorenstein, who has much more to gain/lose depending on the outcome. Due to long-standing existing plans, several firms/organizations are set to move out of that area this year and next - Bank of America, the CA public utilities commission, SF county health commission. BofA is moving some operations out of town and others into vacant space in its financial district offices, the CPUC has been waiting for construction on its new HQ to be completed, SFCH is also moving into new premises.<p>The upshot of all this is that an already blighted area is anticipated to see the departure of ~8,000 employees to other parts of downtown and <i>3 million square feet of newly vacant office space</i> - which means imminent death for other local businesses like coffee shops, convenience stores and drugstores which serve the needs of office workers. Besides office workers, the only other traffic in that area comes from the Warfield (a popular live music venue), two tired-looking strip clubs, and a few discount stores selling clothes, cellphones or DJ equipment. Not only is it desperately in need of new business, it's in need of a younger population with different standards and demands.<p>Anyone who's been thinking of opening an office in SF ought to look into it; besides the possible 1.5% stock option exemption for the next 5 years, right now prospective tenants have about as much negotiating power as they will ever have. Monthly rent in that area is under $3/sqft. and although it is tatty at street level, it has the same transit connections as the rest of downtown.

Since most venture-backed start-ups lose money, they pay little state and federal income tax. San Francisco taxes payroll expense, which is independent of operating profit and can easily become a burden especially since most web businesses have little capital costs and the largest business expense is employee salaries.<p>My 20 person company is financed through cash flow. We pay around $1.5 million in payroll each year and our after-tax profits are around 8% of revenue. San Francisco's payroll tax reduces our after-tax profits to around 6%, which is equivalent to the city charging a 20% income tax on top of the existing Federal and State taxes. This brings our total tax burden to well over 50%.

This is surprisingly well written. Indeed, it persuaded me that this SF stock option tax is probably a bad thing.<p>But the article is wrong in one point: a move to Brisbane <i>would</i> be a painful quality-of-life sacrifice. True, in most major US cities, eight miles doesn't count as a commute, but as a transplant from the suburbs to San Francisco, I can assure you that I appreciate a city where I can walk or take transit most places. Most of my friends and I would take San Francisco over "most major US cities" in a heartbeat. Exorbitant rents and all.<p>Indeed, although I own a car, many of my friends don't, and I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few Twitter employees are now happily doing without. You can't reasonably get to Brisbane without a car.

There really is no argument here. Either SF wants to keep Twitter, or they don't. They aren't going to guilt trip Twitter into staying, so there is absolutely no chain of events that ends in Twitter paying the SF payroll tax. Case closed?

I think the degree of special treatment Twitter is seeking from SF is disproportionate to the number of jobs they actually provide.

I always wondered why Pixar was in Emeryville. :-)

Here Twitter is a bunch of whiners trying to use social capital as political capital, "people think we're cool, so you should give us something special." which means the SF Board of Supervisors will likely bend over on this. Total high-school politics. The supes like fancy holiday parties too, after all.