There’s a signature drive to put a 5% “billionaire tax” on the California ballot. It has not collected even one signature, but the billionaires are freaking out on Twitter with grand tantrums saying they will leave the state en masse.

We live in a nation where the richest 1% owns 30% of all wealth in the US. And the system is clearly set up to favor the mega-rich investor class. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett complained for years that he has a lower tax rate than his own secretary, and it has been brought up in many political campaigns that billionaires pay a lower tax rate than teachers and nurses. Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and George Soros have gone several years paying no federal income taxes whatsoever, contributing to an era of very extreme income inequality that has no precedent in modern times, if not the entire history of human civilization.

Consider in this context a New York Times article published on Friday of last week, saying that some California political activists were working on a ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ wealth in the state, and how a couple high-profile billionaires are throwing a stink that they will leave California because of it. That Friday article led to a full-blown, four-alarm Christmas weekend marathon of wealthy tech bros throwing massive Twitter tantrums saying that they were going to leave the state of California.

Wait, aren't these wealthy tech bros the exact same assholes who were just begging for a government bailout when Silicon Valley Bank when belly-up in March 2023? (As seen above.) Yes, these are those exact same assholes. And their Twitter histrionics may be giving this currently theoretical ballot measure’s signature drive the greatest free advertising campaign it could have ever dreamed of.

This story first popped up in the New York Post on December 22, in an article interestingly written by two recent SF Standard staff writers who’ve since moved on to the right-wing Fox News ecosystem. That article quotes YC Combinator CEO Garry Tan (technically not a billionaire, he would not be affected) and one tax advisor, both saying that the billionaires would all leave California if forced to pay higher taxes.

The NY Times article came out four days later, and does name specific billionaires' names. It says that Google co-founder Larry Page and straight-to-DVD knockoff Bond villain Peter Thiel were “cutting or reducing their ties to California by the end of the year,” and that this information came “according to five people familiar with their thinking.”

The Times article also notes that Governor Gavin Newsom is dead-set against this billionaire tax, as Newsom too fears that billionaires would flee California.

The thing is, this so-called California Billionaire Tax Act is not even a real ballot proposal yet. The effort has not even collected one single signature to make the 2026 (or whenever) ballot, and it would require 870,000 signatures to do so. The effort is being spearheaded by the SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West labor union.

As the Chronicle explains, the measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on any California resident with a net worth of more than $1 billion, with most of the revenue going toward the state’s healthcare system.  The Chronicle also lists the 214 current California billionaires who would be hit with the tax. And it would hit billionaires on their favorite accounting trick, by taxing the currently untaxed unrealized capital gains (this is, unsold stock), which is what constitutes most of their mind-boggling fortunes.  

Those mind-boggling fortunes have gotten much larger just in the last year, as billionaires are currently paying no taxes at all on what is by far the largest driver of their ever-growing wealth.

Seriously, maybe some of these people really do have just too much money to throw around?

And oh, the billionaires and their lickspittles have spent the last five days throwing histrionic tantrums on Twitter, as if paying taxes is “confiscating” when it happens to wealthy people, but perfectly fine when taxation is applied to the middle- and lower-class populations.

Some billionaires have taken a more measured approach to their rage-tweeting, but it’s still pretty clear that taxing unrealized capital gains is literally the billionaires’ worst nightmare.

KRON4 notes that Silicon Valley Congressional rep Ro Khanna has jumped into the discourse, supporting the billionaire tax, and jokingly saying of the billionaires threatening to leave, “I will miss them very much.”

There is some dispute over Rep. Khanna’s claim that this is a “1% tax on billionaires for 5 years.” It is a one-time 5% tax, but people would have five years to pay it. I’m no tax accountant, so I cannot say whether Khanna is distorting the matter.

But the billionaires are fucking furious over this, that is for sure. Above we see diehard Trumper VC David Sacks high on his own supply of the “billionaires are victims” card, and other prominent rich MFs are vowing to primary Ro Khanna out of Congress, as they assume that billionaires and their perspectives somehow have enormous widespread popular public support.

That’s… probably not the case? Which is the funny thing about this Silicon Valley rich people freakout about the proposed billionaire tax. The rich guys’ tantrums are probably doing more to elevate interest in and awareness of the ballot measure and its upcoming signature drive. And they're providing a massive boost of free marketing to the signature-gatherers who will need nearly 900,000 signatures to get this previously far-fetched proposition onto the ballot.

Related: Report: Ron Conway Was Among Venture Capitalists Begging For Silicon Valley Bank Bailout [SFist]

Image: WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson - Pool/Getty Images)

• A longtime San Jose police officer has been jailed without bail after allegedly firing his gun while drunk inside a Morgan Hill apartment and is facing a separate child abuse charge in Monterey County. Prosecutors say Officer Timothy Faye, 51, grabbed his fiancée’s 8-year-old daughter by the hair days before the shooting incident. [Mercury News]
• BART and other local transit agencies are pushing for a regional sales tax increase to cover mounting deficits, despite receiving billions in state and federal aid since the pandemic. Critics argue BART’s growing payroll and declining ridership reflect poor fiscal management, with employee costs up 32% since 2019 while boardings dropped 57%. [East Bay Times]
• One person was killed and another injured in a shooting Friday evening in Fremont, prompting police to shut down part of Mission Boulevard and surround a nearby home during the investigation. [NBC Bay Area]
• The NAACP threatened to sue Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this week, alleging the company’s Memphis data center is operating dozens of methane gas turbines without permits, worsening local air pollution. [Reuters]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

The tax on rideshares that was supposed to help dig Muni out of its deficit is cruising to a big win, but will probably never take effect, because it conflicts with the Prop M business tax measure which is winning by even more.

The morning after the November 5 election when we were reporting the results on local SF ballot measures, we noted that the Prop L tax on rideshares to fund Muni was on its way to a big win by a 56%-44% margin. With tens of thousands more votes counted in the Friday afternoon update, Prop L has even increased that eight-percentage point lead.

So it seems like indeed Uber, Lyft, and robotaxi companies will be taxed to help Muni out of its $214 million deficit and possible service cuts, right?

Not so fast, rideshare tax. The even larger victory for the seemingly unrelated Prop M business tax reform measure will cancel out Prop L if it gets more votes, according to SFGate. And right now, Prop M has nearly 22,000 more votes, though some 117,000 votes remain to be counted.

While the two propositions would appear to have very little to do with one another, both involve making changes to the city’s gross receipts tax system. And the SF Department of Elections was quite clear in the legislative text of Prop M that “If Proposition M passes with more votes than Proposition L, then Proposition L would have no legal effect.”

As of the current totals, Prop M is passing with 170,572 votes. Prop L is passing too, but only with 148,640 votes. So it’s looking like Prop M for the win on this one, with Prop L unable to keep up, despite its majority win.

Prop L advocates are not giving up. “We do think that we’ll likely run stronger in the ballots that are remaining, so we want to see how that looks before calling anything,” Yes on L campaign manager Cyrus Hall told the Examiner. (Those remarks were made before Friday afternoon’s vote update, in which Prop M grew its victory margin over Prop L.)

As of Friday's update, Prop M has 170,572 votes (69.7%), and Prop L has 148,640 (56.6%).

Note: This post has been updated with the updated Friday, November 8 vote results.

Related: Early Results Have Car-Free Great Highway Ahead, Prop D Commission Reform Losing [SFist]

Image: @sftransitact via Twitter

With the SFMTA looking at a $214 million deficit and potential service cuts, a ragtag band of riders came up with Prop L, which would tax Lyft, Uber, and Waymo rides to effectively bail out Muni.

The SF Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA), which oversees Muni, is looking at a likely $214 million deficit come the year 2026. That could likely lead to services being cut, or parking meter hours being extended. So an informal group of transit activists called the SF Transit Riders got together over the summer, gathered thousands of signatures, and got the Prop L tax on rideshare companies onto your November ballot. The proposed measure would tax Lyft, Uber, Waymo, and any other rideshare company, and direct that money to support Muni.

“​​The proposed measure would create a new gross receipts tax on transportation network companies and autonomous vehicle businesses,” according to the ballot measure’s text. “This new tax would be on passenger transportation service gross receipts in San Francisco above $500,000.”

So if the company pulls in $500,000-$1 million on rides that originate in San Francisco per year, they’d pay an additional 1% tax on those rides. If the company makes $1 million - $2.5 million on those rides, that tax goes up to 2.5%. The tax is 3.5% for $2.5 million to $25 million in rides, and 4.5% for more than $25 million worth of rides.

Prop L supporters say this would just be rideshare companies paying their fair share.

“Right now, San Francisco taxes ride-hail and robotaxi companies at a lower rate than other big cities,” they say in their ballot arguments. “If Prop L passes, SF ride-hail taxes will still be lower than those in NYC, DC, and Chicago. This is a small, common-sense tax on those companies to help keep Muni running and accessible for all.”

Meanwhile, opponents say in their rebuttal that “Mismanagement and lack of accountability, not just plunging ridership, have contributed to Muni’s whopping $214 million debt. This tax raises only a tiny fraction of the funding Muni needs, with no plan to spend it.”

Thanks to Uber and Lyft money, Prop L opponents have raised three times the campaign contributions ($912,000) as Prop L supporters have ($301,000). As seen above, their PAC called SF for Muni Accountability and Reliable Service - No on Prop L has pulled a $750,000 cash donation from Uber, and $103,000 from Lyft. But Lyft has carried most of this PAC’s “nonmonetary contributions” (which are still monetary), by paying the PAC’s staff, consultants, and its various other costs.  

If passed, the Prop L tax would be added on top of the 3.25% tax on single rides and 1.5% tax on pool rides that SF voters passed in 2019.

Related: Muni Somehow Scores Its Highest Rider Satisfaction Rate In 23 Years [SFist]

Images: (Left) YES on L: Community Transit Act via Facebook, (Right) Demand Muni Reform

The California Supreme Court has struck down an anti-tax measure that had qualified for the November ballot through a signature drive, saying that it violates state constitutional procedure.

The initiative, brought by business interests, is called the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, and if it passed it would have required voters to approve any and all tax increases passed by the state Legislature, and it would mandated that all local tax measures be passed by two-thirds majority votes — which is something that is already done here under the San Francisco charter.

As the Associated Press notes, the initiative also sought to retroactively reverse all tax increases that had been passed since January 1, 2022.

Newsom and legislative leaders sued to block the measure last fall, and now the state Supreme Court has ruled in their favor, saying that the ballot measure amounted to an illegal attempt to revise the state Contitution.

Writing for the court's unanimous seven-member majority, Justice Goodwin Liu says that the proposed taxation changes "are within the electorate’s prerogative to enact, but because those changes would substantially alter our basic plan of government, the proposal cannot be enacted by initiative." Liu writes that such changes would be "governed by the procedures for revising our Constitution" which have to be submitted to voters by a supermajority of the Legislature or a constitutional convention.

Voters would be permitted to amend the constitution, Liu explains, but not revise it, in this manner.

The court added that the measure also would have "strip[ped] the Legislature of authority to promptly raise revenues" in the event of a financial crisis or natural disaster.

This is the first time in over 20 years the state's high court has blocked a measure from reaching the ballot, as Cal Matters reports. Though, as the Chronicle notes, there was that 2018 measure to divide the state into three states, which the court struck down but it was then withdrawn by its sponsor.

State Senator Scott Wiener praised the court's decision today, saying in a statement that the ballot measure was "designed to tear down state and local government and make it impossible to fund basic services like police, fire, and education."

But others cast the court as being in the pocket of Democratic leaders.

"Clearly, the state Supreme Court has now sent a signal that they are part of the progressive agenda in California, that we are a one-party state in California and there is no independent judiciary in California anymore," said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable which supported the measure, at a press conference Thursday, per Cal Matters.

"There is no independent judiciary in California anymore,” Lapsley also said. “Be scared. Because it’s only going to get worse.”

Ominously, Lapsley added, "This, for us, is just a battle in the bigger war. We will be back. They have no idea what’s coming."

Top image: Wil Stewart

SF Supervisor and mayoral candidate Ahsha Safai may have won the first battle in the war of the 2024 SF elections with a new ballot measure tying police staffing to tax revenue, though a colleague called it “the worst-written piece of legislation I think I’ve seen.”

There is an incorrect theory being promoted in right-wing media that San Francisco’s rampant car break-ins and retail theft problems happen because the city somehow “defunded the police.” In reality, City Hall gave the SFPD a $25 million overtime boost in March, and another $60 million boost in Mayor Breed’s latest budget. Though the crime issues, and the chronic understaffing of SFPD persist, so Supervisor Matt Dorsey offered up a March 2024 ballot measure called the “SFPD Full Staffing Act” that would direct a reported $30 million a year to ensuring we have no fewer than 2,100 SFPD officers.

But Supervisor Ahsha Safai, who mind you is very much running for mayor, added an amendment to the measure requiring this be paid for by taxes rather than budget cuts to other departments. Safai and Dorsey promptly engaged in a very public spat on the matter, with Dorsey disowning the measure and calling Safai’s amendment a “poison pill.”

But the SF Board of Supervisors voted 6-5 on Tuesday to approve putting Safai’s version of the measure on your March 5, 2024 ballot. And considering this has evolved into a proxy warmup fight for the November 2024 mayoral election, the political dynamics here deserve some attention.

Safai’s amendment may be less of a “poison pill,” and more of a “make sure other unionized departments get theirs too” maneuver. Check out Safai above, alongside workers with union apparel and signs, in a tweet that is not from Safai, but instead from a political group. Note the demand to “Fully staff nurses, 911 dispatchers, paramedics, and more,” and the almost Dean Preston-esque language of “Make big corporations pay their fair share.”

Safai says a new tax may be necessary because of our current gigantic budget deficit.

“This is and will be the most difficult budget that I’ve faced in seven years on the Board of Supervisors,” he said before Tuesday’s vote. “We are now facing over a half a billion dollar budget deficit.”

And yes he wants more cops, but he also wants more money for other public safety personnel.

“We are down emergency room nurses,” Safai continued. “We are down 30 to 40 911 call operators. We are down sheriffs, we are down paramedics, we are down mental health technicians, we are down firefighters, and yes we are down police officers.”

You would expect Dorsey to bellyache about bringing the bacon to anyone other than his previous employer SFPD, and he’s been complaining about this for weeks. But there was also opposition to Safai’s measure from the progressive left flank of the board.

“This is the worst-written piece of legislation I think I’ve seen in the 15 years on this board,” Supervisor Ronen said Tuesday. “As someone who’s supported every new revenue measure, every new tax against the rich that has ever been on the ballot, I would not support this measure.”

And Ronen also pointed out, “Since 2017, this board has increased SFPD funding by over $200 million.”

Yet somehow Safai picked off some of Breed’s moderate allies on a measure that Breed opposes.

“I know this has been mentioned as a ‘poison pill’,” Supervisor Catherine Stefani said, explaining her break from the moderates. She said Safai’s changes “actually planted a seed, and pushed the board to do more on this issue.”

“It is not shocking that other public safety personnel like 911 dispatchers, who are also working double shifts, get a little nervous and feel a little left out during this (police funding) process,” Stefani added.

So Safai managed to shuffle the usual moderate-progressive party lines. He also managed to throw a bone to a larger public employee constituency than just police officers. That’s likely a preview of how SF mayoral candidates will use ballot measures in the March 5, 2024 election as proxy fights for the November 5, 2024 mayoral election.  

Related: SF Supervisor Ahsha Safai Makes It Official: He's Running For Mayor [SFist]

Image via SFGovTV

A new report from top SF City Hall economists says that it’s troublesome how the city’s five largest taxpayers pay 25% of all the city’s business taxes, and that remote work changes by top taxpayers companies lowered SF tax revenue by $484 million in 2021.

Hey, remember back in March 2022, when Mayor London Breed joined business owners in a get your ass back to the office campaign, at a time when the U.S. was still seeing an average of about 1,900 COVID-19 deaths per day? We may have some insight into her urgency there. According to a Chronicle writeup of a new report from  top city economists, remote work trends in the finance, information, and tech sectors “reduced the city’s tax revenue by $484 million in 2021.”

But the full 15-page report contains some crucial additional context. “It is important to note this figure is not a real budgetary loss,” says the report from the city’s Treasurer, Controller, and Chief Economist. “At no point did the City’s revenue from (gross receipts tax and homelessness gross receipts tax) decline by that amount. However, the figure can be viewed as a fiscal impact of remote work —  revenue that the City was not owed, because office employees are spending less time physically working in San Francisco.”

This is all because gross receipts taxes are calculated by how many workers are located in the city, and remote work has cut into that. “In this new era of remote work, the City’s business tax base is already eroding,” the report adds. That could reverse, but at the moment, it’s not reversing very quickly.

This will all be sold as San Francisco being “anti-business,” and we do have the highest corporate taxes of any California city. But the report also points out that San Francisco’s  Gross Domestic Product grew by nearly $25 billion in 2020 and 2021, the largest increase for any county with more than 500,000 residents, despite the population loss. That doesn’t feel very “anti-business.”

But there’s still a very big problem here in how our tax base is strongly concentrated among just a few large companies. (These companies are not identified, but you figure it’s companies like Salesforce and Wells Fargo.) The Chron sums this up as “the five largest taxpayers accounted for $339 million in business taxes, or 24% of the total.” The SF Business Times views it a little more broadly by saying “San Francisco relies on just 10 companies for a third of its business tax revenue.”

That means San Francisco’s business tax revenue has all its eggs in a small handful of baskets. That’s a problem if one  or two of these companies goes under, or decides to relocate its headquarters to Butte, Montana or something. Supervisor Rafael Mandelman asked for this report, and he’s definitely making political hay of it. And there are sure to be political battles. But this couple-year-old data may be slightly out of date, or also just the inevitable result of monopolization of certain industries, where a few top tech titans essentially control giant chunks of their industries.

And many of those tech titans are based in, or have a huge office presence in San Francisco. At least, they do for now.

Related: Persistent Remote-Work Rules Could Well Kill SF's Downtown Hospitality Scene [SFist]

Image: Sebastien Gabriel via Unsplash

Businesses and households in all nine Bay Area counties are now classified as “storm victims,” so the IRS and California Franchise Tax Board are cutting us an extra month of slack to blow off filing our taxes.

Is this one of those years when Americans get an extra day or two to do their taxes, because of some holiday that is only observed that day in Washington, D.C.? It is; the holiday is Emancipation Day, April 16, which this year falls on a Sunday, so federal employees are off on Monday, meaning Tax Day for most Americans is not until Tuesday, April 18. But because of the pummeling of storms these last two weeks, the whole Bay Area is getting an even longer extension.

The IRS announced this week that Tax Day is extended until May 15 for those who qualify as “California storm victims” because of the county they live in. Then the next day, the IRS expanded that list of counties so that residents and businesses of all nine Bay Area counties are covered by the deadline extension: San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties.

And for good measure, Governor Gavin Newsom’s office just announced that the California state tax filing deadline has been moved to May 15 as well. Grab a box of Whip-Its and relax, everybody!

"California storm victims now have until May 15, 2023, to file various federal individual and business tax returns and make tax payments," the IRS said in their announcement. "The tax relief postpones various tax filing and payment deadlines that occurred starting on January 8, 2023. As a result, affected individuals and businesses will have until May 15, 2023, to file returns and pay any taxes that were originally due during this period."

The complete list of California counties qualifying for the tax deadline extension is seen above.

You don’t even have to prove any form of hardship, or that you were, in fact, a storm victim in any way. You just have to live in one of the designated counties. “The IRS automatically provides filing and penalty relief to any taxpayer with an IRS address of record located in the disaster area,” the announcement says. “Therefore, taxpayers do not need to contact the agency to get this relief.”

And if you do any maneuvering with retirement accounts or other contributions to limit your tax exposure, you get another month on that too. “This includes 2022 individual income tax returns due on April 18, as well as various 2022 business returns normally due on March 15 and April 18,” the IRS explains. “Among other things, this means that eligible taxpayers will have until May 15 to make 2022 contributions to their IRAs and health savings accounts.”  

Related: 13 Best Tax Planners & Tax Planning Companies [SFist]

Image: kellysikkema via Unsplash

In an effort to resolve tens of thousands of outstanding tax bills, some dating back to 1993, the city of San Francisco has recently sent out a round of notices to people who owe some long-overdue taxes — and some of these bills may seem ridiculous.

Somebody's got a bee in their bonnet over at the City Controller's Office, or the Treasurer & Tax Collector's Office, because some bills are showing up in people's mailboxes that they probably thought were long forgotten/forgiven.

One of those was a $450 bill for a tax on unsecured property — originally $36 but now with 28 years of late fees and penalties tacked on — from 1993 that was received by a former San Francisco dentist, Mike Lano.

Lano took his story to NBC Bay Area and they bit, saying that this is "the most ridiculous thing that’s ever happened" to him.

Lano now lives in Southern California, and for all San Francisco knew he could have been long dead. But they tracked him down and sent him an invoice, which he says is the first one he's received in 28 years. Lano also says that the bill is a mistake, and that he paid that unsecured property tax — a tax on the equipment in his former dental office near Sutter and Stockton streets — in person back in 1993.

Someone at City Hall tells NBC Bay Area that the bill they sent Lano is one of many, and that the city currently is trying to clean up its books and clear 47,753 unpaid tax accounts. Allegedly the city is currently owed $146 million in outstanding and delinquent taxes.

As for the records of what notices they may have sent out over the years, the city doesn't necessarily have those. "We have millions of debts we are collecting over decades. So it’s not feasible / practical to maintain copies of everything sent," said the Treasurer's Office in a statement to NBC.

One CPA the station spoke to suggests it's up to the taxpayer to keep any and all records that they've paid these bills, for situations like these.

But it sounds like Lano only has to wait this out another year and that bill may just go away — the city has a 30-year statute of limitations on tax bills, so that's one reason why bills from 1993 just went out.

Photo by Jack Sloop

California is home to the largest share of the United States’ billionaires. Soon, lawmakers say they could have to pay up.

Assemblyperson Alex Lee (D-San Jose) re-introduced a tax on extreme wealth this week. It would tax people with a net worth of $50 million or more an extra 1%, and billionaires an extra 1.5%. That would affect about 15,000 households in the state. Lee says the tax would be on a person’s full wealth, whether that wealth has been “realized as income or not.”

The False Claims Act got its name from its authors’ research on income tax avoidance of some of the world’s richest people.

“The ProPublica analysis released last year revealed that the richest 25 Americans pay just a tiny fraction of their wealth in taxes, and some are able to pay little to nothing in income tax, with effective tax rates lower than the average American. By increasing their fortunes in assets such as stocks and property and then borrowing off those assets, they are able to avoid selling the assets and paying capital gains taxes,” explained Lee.

There are fears it could push some of those wealthy people out of California. For instance, when Elon Musk faced restrictions in California, he moved Tesla's headquarters to Austin, Texas and likely has most of his personal wealth parked there now too.

Assemblymember Lee argues that won’t be the case.

“While some say California is driving away higher-income residents, the opposite is true – we’ve actually been losing lower and middle-income residents that are being priced out while continuing to gain higher-income residents.”

Lee also says a vast majority of Californians support such a tax, with a David Binder poll clocking that number in at 70% of California residents.

While California does have the most billionaires, it also has the highest poverty rate. Before the pandemic, the Golden State’s poverty rate was about 16.4%,whereas the nationwide average was 13.4%. Those numbers have only worsened in the pandemic.

A UC Berkeley and UC Davis study estimates the wealth tax would bring the state about $22.3 billion a year. Right now, there’s no guidelines for how that money would be used.

The bill would need voter approval, since it exceeds the state’s tax rate limit, which right now is set at 0.4%. Last year, Lee’s attempt at the same tax didn’t even make it to committee.

Other similar efforts have also failed repeatedly, and even California Governor Gavin Newsom has avoided the issue. The California Taxpayers Association has come out against the bill.

If it passes, AB 2289 would kick into effect in 2023 for billionaires and in 2025 for 50-millionaires.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Smokers, it's time to start setting aside more cash for your habit, or to quit it altogether: On Saturday, the voter-approved tax increase of $2 per pack of cigarettes kicks in, making your cancer sticks costlier than ever.

Proposition 56 is to blame/credit, the measure California voters passed in November, 2016 that increased taxes from 87 cents per pack to $2.87.

And before you assume that vaping will get you out of the new fees, be aware that as of Saturday, "products like electronic cigarettes and e-liquids" will also face the increased tax, "based on their wholesale cost" the Davis Enterprise reports.

San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, who sponsored the initiative, said last May that the intention of the law was to curb smoking, not generate dough. “If you raise the price, fewer young people will start smoking or ever get addicted to a substance that will ruin their health and cause them to die earlier," he said in May. "That’s the biggest selling point.”

Steyer might not be wrong: According to as noted by NPR last September, a 2014 report from the US Surgeon General suggested that "For every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes, smoking goes down 4 percent."

And as the smoking rate in CA is pretty low — about 12 percent, NPR reports, the extra two bucks might be the incentive some puffers need to kick the habit. "It may be that a price increase that will follow Prop. 56 will be enough to just get these light, intermittent smokers to just say, 'Forget it,' " UCSF professor and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education Stanton Glantz opines.

According to opponents, however, the tax will just "increase black market sales of cigarettes," Reuters reports. Tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds spent at around $90 million to defeat Prop 56, also claiming that "just 13 percent (of the new tax revenue) goes to tobacco prevention and control programs," opposition spokesperson Beth Miller said. All in all, the tax is expected to generate $1 billion to $1.4 billion in new tax revenues for the state, most of it going to Medi-Cal.

Smokers who persist after this weekend won't just be paying more in taxes (and, one assumes, their mortality), as tobacco makers also raised prices on their products in anticipation of this weekend's increase. Investopedia reports that beginning March 19, smokes from major manufacturers went up by eight cents per pack, "a direct move to minimize the hit to their profits, as smokers absorb price increases. This willingness from consumers to pay for cigarettes and tobacco products is another reason the government does so well in taxing them."

One person who appears willing to pay the extra fees is Dolores Park smoker Austin Thomas. In a video taken last fall by Mission Local, Thomas characterized the increase as "f**king bulls**t, man," but said he "would just deal with it."

Related: Video: Mission Smokers Reveal Thoughts On Proposed Cigarette Tax Increase

The controversial "tech tax" is dead for the time being, with a 2-to-1 vote yesterday by the Board of Supervisors’ budget committee meaning the measure will not be sent to the full board for vote. The Chronicle reports that had it been placed on November's ballot by the full board and approved by two-thirds of SF voters, the “Homelessness and Housing Impact Technology Tax” would have imposed a 1.5 percent payroll tax on San Francisco technology companies and used the proceeds to fund affordable housing and homeless services. Not everyone was a fan.

“As a city, I don’t think we should subscribe to the politics of Donald Trump and the Republicans that they are saying certain people are not welcome here in San Francisco,” Supervisor Mark Farrell said yesterday, kind of bizarrely invoking the Republican candidate after voting to kill the measure in committee. "Members of our technology community are San Franciscans. And I, for one, believe we should embrace them. And for those that are new to our city ... seek to engage them rather than demonize them."

The measure was supported by Supervisors Eric Mar, David Campos, and Aaron Peskin, and back in June Mar told the Examiner why he thought it was the right move. "After five years of a rapid tech boom in The City that we are all aware of, it is time San Francisco’s big tech companies are paying their fair share to address the impacts of housing and homelessness in our city."

Ted Egan, San Francisco's chief economist, didn't agree — something he made clear in a report released yesterday which attempted to project the potential impacts of the measure should it pass. While noting that the tax would generate anywhere from $70 million to $140 million per year, Egan argued the overall impact would in fact be negative. "Because the decline in earnings will more than offset the decline in housing prices,
housing will be less affordable, on average," the report claims. "This is possibly the case because some of the tax would fall on technology company employees, many of whom do not live in the city. Technology workers who live, but do not work, in the city would be unaffected." Given how many major tech companies are located south of the city, this is a fair point.

For the purposes of the tax, the report notes that a tech company was to be defined as one "doing business in San Francisco that receives any gross receipts from any of five technology business activities, defined in the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS)." Those included: "Computer & Peripheral Equipment Manufacturing," "Software Publishing," "Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services," "Internet Publishing & Broadcasting and Web Search Portals," and "Computer Systems Design and Related Services."

It should be noted that there is a separate effort underway by new Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing head Jeff Kositsky to solicit voluntary charitable donations from large tech companies, in and outside the city, to support transitional housing and homeless services.

While the proposal was quick to generate a backlash — mayoral spokesperson Deirdre Hussey told the Chron it was a “job-killing measure” — there is now a backlash to the backlash.

In a press release sent out this morning, progressive supporters announced their intention to raise enough signatures to put the tech tax on the ballot — but that's not all. "Supervisor Mark Farrell spearheaded the effort to kill the legislation at a special Budget Committee hearing on Monday," reads the release. "Community members are calling for an investigation of Supervisor Mark Farrell by the City Attorney and Ethics Commission in light of a clear conflict of interest and his extensive ties to the tech industry."

It remains to be seen if the group will gather the necessary signatures to keep this thing afloat.

Previously: Proposed SF 'Tech Tax' Angers Mayor, Tech Industry

With a market capitalization of $570 billion, Cupertino-based Apple is the wealthiest company in the world. And while it makes universally loved products, what the company does with its earnings is raising some pretty prominent eyebrows — most notably, perhaps, those belonging to Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. In an interview with Bloomberg, the renowned economist spoke harshly about the company's habit of storing a huge chunk of cash overseas — a practice that allows it to avoid a significant amount of US taxes.

“Our current tax system encourages companies to keep their money abroad, opens up a vast loophole through what is called the transfer-pricing system that allows them not only to keep their money abroad but, effectively, to escape taxation,” Stiglitz told the publication.

He continued to say that the fact that roughly $215 billion of Apple’s $232 billion in cash is kept outside the country amounts to fraud. "Here we have the largest corporation in capitalization not only in America, but in the world, bigger than GM was at its peak, and claiming that most of its profits originate from about a few hundred people working in Ireland — that’s a fraud.”

Stiglitz is referring to Apple's Ireland HQ and 5,500 employees operating out of the country. Because the corporate tax rate there is 12.5 percent, as opposed to the United State's top rate of 35 percent, Apple saves billions of dollars in unpaid taxes by claiming earnings come from its Ireland division.

This is not a new issue. In 2012 The New York Times published a piece detailing how "Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the 'Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,' which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean." According to the Times, this method was so successful in reducing taxes that it is now employed by "hundreds of other corporations."

Bloomberg reports that Apple has denied any illegality, and, indeed, it does appear that Stiglitz is critiquing the company for taking advantage of poorly written tax laws — not for breaking them.

Might these laws be changed under a future presidency of Hillary Clinton? Maybe attendees of Apple CEO Tim Cook's upcoming August 24 Hillary Clinton fundraiser, picked up by CBS 5, can email and let us know if the topic comes up.

Related: Apple Barely Pays Any Taxes

A proposed payroll tax on San Francisco tech companies is already making enemies, and it's not even on the ballot yet. The Chronicle reports that the measure, introduced by Supervisor Eric Mar yesterday and co-sponsored by Aaron Peskin and David Campos, would impose a 1.5 percent payroll tax on tech companies with gross receipts over $1 million and has angered both Mayor Ed Lee and city business advocates.

“After five years of a rapid tech boom in The City that we are all aware of, it is time San Francisco’s big tech companies are paying their fair share to address the impacts of housing and homelessness in our city,” Eric Mar, referring to the fact that the projected $120 million in annual revenue generated by the measure would be spent on homeless services and housing, told the Examiner.

Lee, of course, has famously touted what he sees as the benefits of the 2011 "community benefit agreement" — commonly referred to as the Twitter tax break. While the measure encouraged tech companies to set up shop in SF, it was not without cost. In 2014 alone, for example, officials estimate it cost the city $34 million.

In conversation with the Chronicle, mayoral spokesperson Deirdre Hussey called Mar's proposal a “job-killing measure.” Supervisor Mark Farrell echoed that sentiment, telling the paper he thought it was “the worst idea I’ve heard in months.”

Meanwhile, Alex Tourk, a spokesperson for tech-advocacy group sf.citi complained even more aggressively to the Examiner. “I am appalled at the political vindictiveness of this proposed measure,” he said.

Mar's measure needs six Supervisors to qualify for the November ballot. If he can manage to find three more, we may all have the chance to vote on whether or not the tech sector should pay more in taxes — a situation that could lead to an advertising blitz that would put the "No On F" campaign to shame.

Related: How The 'Twitter Tax Break' Cost The City $30 Million More In 2014 Than 2013