[overdrivetg]

Do you have a source for your "SF collects $2800 per month per household in taxes" number?

This Quora answer[1] suggests it's more like $3300/person/yr. The 2010 Census says SF has 345,811 households, or about 2.35 people per household. So $3300 * 2.35 / 12 =~ $650/mo/household in SF.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-San-Francisco-make-in-ta...

[conanbatt]

SF budget is 11 bill. That quora answer is from 2011.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-budget-soar....

Even if you cut it inhalf for the general funds, it gives out 1400U$S per month.

[overdrivetg]

OK, I finally did what I think is the real, updated math:

According to [1] from 2018, "Roughly half of the budget consists of self-supporting activities at the City’s Enterprise departments"

So that leaves $5.5B in General Fund taxes.

According to [2], in 2017 SF had 884,363 residents with 13.4% under 18, so 765,858 adult residents.

$5.5B divided over 765,858 taxpaying adults is $7,181/adult/yr, or just under $600/mo.

You can roll that up into households if you want, but it feels more illustrative to have the number be per taxpaying adult IMO. Having said that, I'll buy your $1,400/household/month number as being basically about right.

I don't disagree with your point about high taxes, but I did want to actually see what the accurate numbers were. Thanks for the interesting discussion.

I'm in LA so I ran the numbers down here for comparison... We turn out to tax at $262/adult/mo, so SF's effective city tax rate is about 2.3x vs Los Angeles.

[1] https://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/CSF_Budget_Book_June...

[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocountycaliforn...

[conanbatt]

> You can roll that up into households if you want, but it feels more illustrative to have the number be per taxpaying adult IMO. Having said that, I'll buy your $1,400/household/month number as being basically about right.

My initial comparison was about rent, so household is what I wanted to compare to. When you get a studio apartment for 2000U$S, the state gets 1400U$S. And because they do not raise 1400U$S through property taxes, they are skimming you somewhere else, by taxes that affect your income in unclear ways (business taxes, sales taxes, etc).

A landlord outside of san francisco, renting out that studio aprt, pays a fraction of the taxes that household consumes.

Its a major distortion.

[overdrivetg]

I'm not sure I know too many 2.3 person households that are in a studio apartment, though. Also above we counted adults vs everyone so the numbers are a bit high for the full household - SF turns out to be more like $1200/household/mo.

Looking again at averages [1], we have average SF rent in 2018 at $3787, so taxes account for roughly 1/3 (32%) of the rent cost.

And let's also compare LA at 2.83 persons/household [2] and $2371 in avg rent [3], so tax per household is $583, or about 25% of rent.

I was just curious to compare that - although you are right that property tax is only $1.7B of SF's $5.5B General Fund revenue [4]. It turns out that most of the rest are Business Taxes and "Other Local Taxes", which look like maybe Transfer Tax is a big piece?

...but if your argument is that SF taxes things other than property tax to raise most of their tax revenue, you are correct, but total business taxes are only $880M, or averaging about $26K/yr.

If you look at an average Starbucks, they're pulling in $880K/yr gross or $200K net [5], so business taxes end up at ~3% of gross, plus SF sales tax of 8.5% means you're paying 11.5% or $0.69 on your $6 cuppa joe.

Expensive, yes - but probably not the major reason rents are high. The rent costs on a 1500sf Starbucks might be as high as $80/sqft/yr = $120,000 - 4.6x the impact that SF business taxes have.

So as far as the numbers go, it looks like supply and demand pushing rental prices up are the primary cost drivers in SF, not any sort of "hidden" SF taxes.

[1] https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren...

[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/losangelescitycalifornia

[3] https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/lo...

[4] https://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/CSF_Budget_Book_June...