Roger Fingas
The Cupertino city council has voted to delay a ballot measure seeking approval for an employee tax on some businesses in the city, particularly Apple.
A discussion on Tuesday night turned into an impromptu 3-1 vote to push the measure off the November 2018 ballot, The Mercury News said on Wednesday. The action was reportedly prompted by "impassioned" public comment, during which multiple people argued against the current tax proposal as vague or unfair to businesses.
The measure will instead appear on a special election ballot in 2019.
The one dissenting vote on the council was cast by Barry Chang, who argued that waiting another year would worsen Cupertino's transporation situation. Apple alone has thousands of workers based in the city, many of whom have to commute by car and clog local roadways.
"I think not only here, the big corporations in the entire nation, the corporations need to take up their fair share to help solve the problems we are facing now," Chang argued. "So that's why this issue needs to be done and needs to be done now instead of waiting."
Chang had some support from fellow councilman Steven Scharf, but the latter argued that the council was moving too fast. To get a measure on the ballot in November, it would have had to agree on details of the tax by July 3. Instead that date will now be used to decide whether to propose a general or special tax in 2019.
Apple is Cupertino's most important employer, giving both politicians and voters a thin line to tread when it comes to taxes. While the city has to be able to pay for infrastructure and services, the company could potentially threaten to move some offices out of the city.
It does, however, have only so much leverage — the company only recently made Apple Park its official corporate address, and is unlikely to abandon a campus it spent billions of dollars to build over the past several years.
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34 Comments
They pushed it off when they saw what happen in Seattle, the council pull back their head tax, because the companies said they will drive for a recall vote for every person who voted to impose the head tax. The politicians we more worried about their pay check than helping the homeless as they claim they were doing with the head tax.
I worked for a start up company and the leadership was asking the local school board and township to give them a tax break to help the company grow, the town supported the idea, the school board did not, one member of the board accuse the company of bribing the school because we offer to give them free computer we were upgrading from and also would install the start of the art network since we made networking equipment, we were going to give the equipment in exchange for a delay in paying the local school tax. Our company campaigned against those who refuse to support the growth and they were all voted off the school board. in this case the school board member were most unpaid. But they lost their position.
The best part of the store is when the company was bought out for billions of $ and the CFO walked into the school board meeting and handed the new school board a big check for the back taxes which the board agree to delay for the company. Not only did the school get computer they needed and could not afford to buy, as well and network, they also got the money later.
These government do not understand where their money comes from and they like the hit the golden goose and break the eggs.
A head-tax should apply to all employers equally. There is no reason to think an Apple employee utilizes the local transportation system any more than any other company's employees. This is just a fancy way to garner local support because it only sticks it to the big guys. Throw a $1,000 head tax on every mom-and-pop business and see how far it goes.
The local government better think long and hard about singling out the biggest business for special assessments. They will find out pretty quick that Apple can simply freeze all new construction on their facilities and push somewhere like North Carolina where the property is much cheaper and taxes are lower. Cupertino got where it is because of big tech, they better at least play fair in trying to tax them.
I guess Cupertino is running out of other people’s money and decided to bleed Apple some more. The company started out there, put Cupertino on the map, put $Millions in the city’s coffers over the years, and it isn’t good enough. Gotta have more. That’s the problem with governments. Their thirst for money is insatiable.
Luckily the entire Apple campus can fly away if needed. #ufo
Cupertino should look at Seattle. The Socialists wanted a head tax of $500 a year. Amazon workers and others, including Dick's Burgers started a petiole. They had enough signatures to start an initiative, so the City backed off for now. They wanted to help and house the “Homeless!”