Snipped from article:

"My guess is the average Mountain View voter would be perfectly happy to tax Google and LinkedIn and the other big companies," Siegel said. "We just have to make it fair and use the money wisely." ...

"It's conceivable this would slow the rate of growth in town, but we have too many good jobs in Mountain View," he said. "It wouldn't hurt for some of the expansion to be elsewhere. We're reaching our limit — we can't grow much more."



Amen.

How many small independent businesses have vanished because of Google's employee perk of feeding their peeps 3 squares a day as well as providing all manner of services (dry cleaning, massages, sundry store, etc.) on it's campus so it's employees are less inclined to ever leave campus, and as a result spend little money in the city -- running errands, dining, etc. -- at least not those commuter employees. Evidently plenty of Google employees DO patronize Century Cinema (as evidenced by the high number of Google bicycles I see scattered about every time I'm at that theater) although the theater is not a small local business.

It sounds like I am picking on Google, and I suppose to some extent I am because imho, to date, Google's footprint has had the largest negative impact on the quality of life for residents of the city of Mountain View, but there are plenty of other large employers here who also fit the bill.


I vote yes. Yes for Mountain View.

These big corporations don't share sales tax revenue with the local community like retail stores do. The public infrastructure that these companies use is based on headcount (streets, parking, traffic, emergency services, public schools for children, etc.). Taxing the company based on headcount makes a lot of sense. If the tax is in the same ballpark as the actual cost of the infrastructure, then the companies have nothing to complain about.

How to get "Around Town"? If there was a Joint Powers Authority, it could be used to distribute these funds - and contract projects/studies independently of VTA. There is a vey interesting tax on the statute books, in Gov Code. It allows a uniform special tax on persons. It isn't clear that it would allow 'exceptions below 100' but even 20, 80 person small companies make transit issues grow.
20 x $10 = $2000, 20,000 x $10 = $200,000. Oh well, that's probably too small to be useful. A JPA might allow 'uniform across region' business license related head fees that would be big enough for the task. What I think you do not want is city competing against city for The Lowest (none) transit related tax structure. It's probably time to realize that urban density means 'pure gas tax' + regressive sales tax, is not a very logical revenue structure.

How to get "Around Town"? If there was a Joint Powers Authority, it could be used to distribute these funds - and contract projects/studies independently of VTA. There is a vey interesting tax on the statute books, in Gov Code. It allows a uniform special tax on persons. It isn't clear that it would allow 'exceptions below 100' but even 20, 80 person small companies make transit issues grow.
20 x $10 = $2000, 20,000 x $10 = $200,000. Oh well, that's probably too small to be useful. A JPA might allow 'uniform across region' business license related head fees that would be big enough for the task. What I think you do not want is city competing against city for The Lowest (none) transit related tax structure. It's probably time to realize that urban density means 'pure gas tax' + regressive sales tax, is not a very logical revenue structure.

How would this apply to contractors? If Google hires a food service firm to run all of its restaurants, and there are 500 people doing that, who would pay hat $500,000 ?

Let's kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Siegel is going to drive this cities finances into the ground if we don't reject him next election.

At least this idea is being promoted by responsible thinkers who have run large companies.

Glenn,

Mr. Siegel has been in contact with the major business interests in town, hoping to find a solution that works for the them too. If done right, it is in their best interests too.

OMG..to use a current B.S. phrase...

MtnView used to be a fun, conservative small town.. We are now run by the new wave of ultra liberals...Tax...Tax... Tax...
Eventually Google and the others will move to Tracy, Stockton, even Death Valley rather than keep up here in the land of Liberal income stealing Cities.
Sure, in the short run it might work...but trust me (or not), eventually this Tax Mentality will crash..

I just wrote an "Anti-City Council" comment.

It didn't show up ...

Once again, the Liberal View won't carry anything negative to the Lib position of the City Council

Maybe all the "big businesses" in Mountain View should just leave - I am sure there are plenty of other states that would welcome them with open arms. Then we wouldn't have anymore traffic problems and all the liberals, socialists, community activists, and sundry leftist rabble in this town can finally be happy.

And Mr Siegel: government spending money wisely? That's has to be the funniest thing I've heard all week.

Be realistic, the major software companies are based entirely on the brainpower of their employees. If they move to some hell hole like Tracy or Stockton or Michigan or New Jersey, all the employees will quit and the company will collapse. The only way these companies will leave town is if San Francisco gives them a sweetheart deal (as Ed Lee seems to be doing with regularity these days, though space in San Francisco is hard to come by). Even the East Bay and San Jose are undesirable to the modern techie. Mountain View is smart to negotiate a reasonable infrastructure reimbursement from these companies, but don't get too greedy.

Taxing big employers like this is a FANTASTIC idea. It places some minimal cost on companies with 100+ employees, helping to offset the big costs their presence puts on the city.

At minimum it could help fund road, parking and transportation improvements.

You could also use it to subsidize renters making less than the median income. Rents have skyrocketed because so many high-paid Google, LinkedIn, etc. employees want to live here, making it unaffordable for people that don't work for these big companies.

And the tax would provide incentives for these companies to limit their growth - encourage people to live elsewhere and work from home, thus reducing traffic and giving time to employees that would otherwise commute.

Probably the ideal tax would be something like 1 or 2 percent of each employee's annual compensation. Though with stock options and free fringe benefits at the big tech firms, it might be better to have it on an increasing scale based on total employees (say $500 per employee per year for 100-500 employees, $1000/year for 500-1000 employees, and $2000 per employee per year for firms with 1000+ employees.

So Sales Tax, transfer tax, utility tax, property tax, parcel tax, BART tax...... aren't enough. When is enough enough?

The goal should never be to discourage hiring workers. It should be focused on solving the problem: congestion.

Companies should be able to earn a tax rebate when they help relieve local congestion. They can run private buses to SF, Caltrain, VTA, BART, etc. for their employees. They can subsidize carpool costs and Clipper card costs, anything that gets employees to take fewer solo car trips. They can encourage more work at home arrangements. They can institute four day work weeks of 10 hour days.

As long as this isn't a cash grab by local governments, rather truly a way to get everyone to do their part, businesses will embrace this initiative.

Lastly, I would not exempt large nonprofits and governments. Any organization, such as Stanford or San Jose State, that has hundreds or thousands of local commuters have a responsibility to help.

Taxing just leads to abuse and misuse of funds.

We have urban planning that has increased and multiplied fees ten times over to mitigate issues such as traffic; therefore, this makes no sense and is simply redistribution of wealth.

Sorry, but the facts and experience simply do not support such taxing measures.

It is not just Google or LinkedIn that have large numbers of workers. Many medium not rich tech sized companies can also have many part/full time workers that can quickly add up. Taxing rich tech only makes an incentive for their next expansion to be outside of the bay area. Look how many people Cisco has laid off in San Jose in the last few years while they expand in other areas of the world. Everybody uses the highways and mass transit. Make a tax fair and do better urban planning. Why is every problem here has to be solved by more taxes and more taxes? I will not be able to afford to retire in Mountain View if this continues in the next few years.

At least this idea is being promoted by responsible bloggers who have run large companies or at least know what best for other people. Tax them and not me.

Mountain View! You've collected enough tax from local residents and these big companies! Use these money to improve the traffic and facilities! Big companies are responsible to create jobs and take care of their employees, not to do your government job!!!!

Many Silicon Valley corporations, in part through a lobbying corporation calling itself "Silicon Valley Leadership Group," favor higher taxes - except on them. The Bay Area wetlands parcel tax headed for the June ballot is a good example. Google would pay the same per parcel tax as any homeowner. Is that fair? Well, Google is not complaining.

How about just taxing the Los Altos / Los Altos Hills commuters into Mountain View employers? Start at the top with Tesla owners! If they take the bus or ride-share? No employment-commute-fee!

Only in California could such ignorance be even considered.

Go ahead and tax businesses even more so more and more jobs can go off-shore.

California receives huge state taxes from the high tech industries and from the workers. Less workers = Less state taxes payed.

You can't fix stupid!

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

So if Mountain View, Palo Alto, Cupertino, and Sunnyvale (MVPACS) start taxing businesses that hire employees, and businesses that hire employees start relocating outside MVPACS, then I wonder what the net effect on the commute will be.

It may reduce the number of people commuting from outside MVPACS to jobs inside MVPACS.

Or it may increase the number of people commuting from inside MVPACS to jobs outside MVPACS.

Use taxes to force big companies to stop hiring in an effort to decrease traffic? Is that REALLY a good solution to the traffic problem? We need a better public transportation system not fewer people. There is NO train service to one of the most highly traveled business routes on the penninsula.

Left one thing out... Has the shuttle service that google is providing to the public actually helped to reduce traffic? The shuttles I see often have no one in them. And are these shuttles for the business community?

I see tons of people using caltrain, but shuttles, busses, and VTA are are usually empty They are all ridiculously slow if you want to get anywhere. Caltrain is the opposite. It's very fast.

How can the people of Mountain View elect these kinds of council members to run our city?

This is a first for the history of Mountain View, tax businesses for creating and hiring people to work.

We need to put a tax on every person who says we need to pass more taxes.

If we just did that we would have so much money lying around that we could use it for firewood in fireplace.

I suppose eliminating businesses from the city would reduce traffic.

@RUSERIOUS, Here is Mountain View's current business license tax schedule: Web Link