San Francisco property owners could pay hundreds or thousands of dollars more per year under a measure introduced Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors - one of many tax proposals that could be placed before voters this fall to help the struggling city. The parcel tax, also proposed by Avalos, would raise an estimated $35 million annually for city parks, the supervisor said. If placed on the November ballot and approved by voters, it would levy a varying fee on residential, commercial and industrial properties - starting at $175 for a single-family home and up to $5,000 for each downtown commercial property.
Other options on the table for a November ballot include an increase to the sales tax and payroll tax, another business tax and an increase to the vehicle license fee. And the city, which has been hit hard by the economic downturn, will also impose dozens of new fees that do not require voter approval but will make doing business, living in and visiting San Francisco more expensive. Among those proposed fees is a new fee on alcohol.
Most of the tax proposals will never see the light of day, however. Even the board's most liberal members - who have proposed all of the taxes - acknowledge that in the current economic climate, San Francisco voters are unlikely to have a large appetite for tax measures. They expect to narrow the options down to just a few measures - and even then it will be a delicate balancing act.
Meanwhile, in Sacramento, AB 827, would allow counties to impose an additional per page recording “fee” of up to $3 for the first page of a document and $1 each for the remaining pages for the archiving of historical documents. This “fee” is really a tax because the charge doesn’t directly pay for the RECORDING of documents as required by state law. All local taxes must be approved by the voters. AB 827 attempts to bypass the voter's right to approve local taxes.
The state (and the country) may be in a terrible economic situation, but that does not turn a tax into a "fee."
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