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Which the private company paid a LOT more than the average person to create. Not sure why so many people seem to think that companies pay nothing fro infrastruc

Which the private company paid a LOT more than the average person to create. Not sure why so many people seem to think that companies pay nothing fro infrastructure.

dalke 13y ago
How much did Google pay for the SF street infrastructure? I thought they didn't pay anything until this January, and even then it's $1 per each use of a bus stop. Also, why the comparison of an "average person" to a private company? Surely the private citizens of San Francisco, as a whole, have invested far more in the city infrastructure than Google has.
- raldi 13y ago
  Street infrastructure is paid for by taxes, including payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, and gas taxes, all of which Google pays.
  - dalke 13y ago
    Google is primarily located in Mountain View, in Santa Clara county. My question was how much of San Francisco's street infrastructure - a different city and county - was supported by Google. Did Google pay "a lot more" than the citizens of the city, as SteveGerencser suggested? The residents and businesses in SF pay about $1 billion in property taxes. How does that compare to specifically Google's contribution? Who pays more in payroll, corporate income, and gas taxes to San Francisco, Twitter or Google? If the answer is Twitter, then shouldn't they have a bigger say than Google?
    - raldi 13y ago
      You're backpedaling. Previously, you said: > I thought they didn't pay anything until this January Now that I've pointed out three ways they pay for SF city infrastructure, you're moving the goalposts. > Google is primarily located in Mountain View But they still have thousands of desks in their San Francisco office space. Also, every employee on those shuttles is either paying SF property tax or paying rent that, in part, goes to paying SF property tax. They also pay state and local sales taxes, which also go towards public infrastructure.
      - dalke 13y ago
        Indeed! But more out of ignorance than backpedaling. I'm apparently 7 years out of date, since the SF office opened in October 2007. bizjournals.com says 2,500 seats, which is 2nd place after Salesforce at 4,000. Tied for 3rd is Lucasfilm and Twitter, with 1,500 each, and Zynga in 4th with 1,300. (Take those numbers with a grain of salt. I see others say that Twitter has 2,000 employees in SF.) Regardless, my questions stand: 1) why compare a company's taxes to an "average person"'s taxes, instead of to the citizenry as a whole, 2) just how much does Google bring into the city in direct taxes, compared to the private citizens? 3) is that sufficient compensation for how the company uses the street infrastructure? Yes, of course the employees on those shuttles are paying taxes. The full analysis would need to look at who would living there if there were no buses, and the level of taxes they pay in that case. For example, the buses are subsidized transport that provide an effective untaxable salary increase, which is a tax shift away from the city. Fuel cost alone is $10/day/vehicle, and TCO is $48 using AAA's estimate of $0.6/mile. SuperShuttle charges $17 to get to SFO, so $10/day is deliberately low-balling it. This means that someone making $80K/year from Google/Mtn View, with subsidized transport, gets an effective $2,500+/year raise, and can outbid someone in the city making $81K/year. In which case, the city ends up with lower taxes. I never said this wasn't complicated, only that there are reasonable arguments for why some people could consider the "buses are better than ..." thesis "having no sound basis (as in fact or law)".
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      FWIW, Google has a SF office that is about as large as Twitter. I also agree with raldi that this line of reasoning is invalid, unless you want Wells Fargo to own & make most of the decisions in SF. (Most of the current SF infrastructure was financed by municipal bonds, many of which were funded by Wells and other Bay-Area financial institutions. My girlfriend used to be a bond-trader at Wells and specifically remembers buying the bonds used to fund construction of the new Bay Bridge.)
  - mtviewdave 13y ago
    This is only true in the broadest possible sense, where "taxes", "government" and "streets" are considered collectively without regard to federal, state or local jurisdiction. But in the U.S., jurisdiction matters a lot. For example, there is (apparently) a Google bus stop at the 18th and Dolores Streets in San Francisco. Dolores Street is a local street, which means it is the responsibility of the City of San Francisco. Maintenance of that street is thus paid for primarily with local and fees taxes collected within the City. Specifically property taxes, business license taxes, local sales taxes, and charges for local services. None of the taxes that you mentioned Google paying would directly fund the maintenance of Dolores Street. Google does pay some of these local taxes, because they have a small office in San Francisco. But the purpose of these shuttles is primarily to transport people outside of San Francisco. It's the City of Mountain View that benefits (from a tax perspective) from these shuttles. That disconnect is at the heart of the complaint: that San Francisco taxpayers are shouldering the burden, while not accruing the benefits.
    - raldi 13y ago
      > Google does pay some of these local taxes, because they have a small office in San Francisco 350,000 sqft is not small. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/07/google-epanding-at-hills-plaza-in.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/07/google-...
      - dalke 13y ago
        It's small relative to the Googleplex, which has 2 million sq. ft, and will be 3.1 million sq. ft next year. It's small relative to the number of people who commute from SF to Google by private bus. ("more than 3,500" in 2012, says http://www.sfbg.com/2012/04/18/private-bus-problem; http://www.sfbg.com/2012/04/18/private-bus-problem; I can't find newer numbers in all the noise, but it seems that more commute to MV than work in the SF office.) It's small relative to the market. That is, there's some 84 million sq. ft. of office space in SF. https://www.cassidyturley.com/DesktopModules/CassidyTurley/Download/Download.ashx?contentId=3182&fileName=San+Francisco+Office+Market+Snapshot+Q4+2013.pdf https://www.cassidyturley.com/DesktopModules/CassidyTurley/D... . The vacancy rate is 8%. So Google has under 0.5% of the occupied office space in SF. To double check, the biggest employers are the city/county (25,000), UCSF (20,000), Wells-Fargo (8,200), SF school district (8,200), and Gap (6,000). See http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2014/01/top-5-largest-san-francisco-employers.html?s=image_gallery http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2014/01/top-5-l... . The Wells Fargo Bank headquarters building alone is 640,000 sq. ft. I agree that it's mid-size were it a company primarily based in SF, but for most of the relevant metrics, it's small.

Which the private company paid a LOT more than the average person to create. Not sure why so many people seem to think that companies pay nothing fro infrastructure.

dalke 13y ago

How much did Google pay for the SF street infrastructure? I thought they didn't pay anything until this January, and even then it's $1 per each use of a bus stop. Also, why the comparison of an "average person" to a private company? Surely the private citizens of San Francisco, as a whole, have invested far more in the city infrastructure than Google has.

raldi 13y ago
Street infrastructure is paid for by taxes, including payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, and gas taxes, all of which Google pays.
- dalke 13y ago
  Google is primarily located in Mountain View, in Santa Clara county. My question was how much of San Francisco's street infrastructure - a different city and county - was supported by Google. Did Google pay "a lot more" than the citizens of the city, as SteveGerencser suggested? The residents and businesses in SF pay about $1 billion in property taxes. How does that compare to specifically Google's contribution? Who pays more in payroll, corporate income, and gas taxes to San Francisco, Twitter or Google? If the answer is Twitter, then shouldn't they have a bigger say than Google?
  - raldi 13y ago
    You're backpedaling. Previously, you said: > I thought they didn't pay anything until this January Now that I've pointed out three ways they pay for SF city infrastructure, you're moving the goalposts. > Google is primarily located in Mountain View But they still have thousands of desks in their San Francisco office space. Also, every employee on those shuttles is either paying SF property tax or paying rent that, in part, goes to paying SF property tax. They also pay state and local sales taxes, which also go towards public infrastructure.
    - dalke 13y ago
      Indeed! But more out of ignorance than backpedaling. I'm apparently 7 years out of date, since the SF office opened in October 2007. bizjournals.com says 2,500 seats, which is 2nd place after Salesforce at 4,000. Tied for 3rd is Lucasfilm and Twitter, with 1,500 each, and Zynga in 4th with 1,300. (Take those numbers with a grain of salt. I see others say that Twitter has 2,000 employees in SF.) Regardless, my questions stand: 1) why compare a company's taxes to an "average person"'s taxes, instead of to the citizenry as a whole, 2) just how much does Google bring into the city in direct taxes, compared to the private citizens? 3) is that sufficient compensation for how the company uses the street infrastructure? Yes, of course the employees on those shuttles are paying taxes. The full analysis would need to look at who would living there if there were no buses, and the level of taxes they pay in that case. For example, the buses are subsidized transport that provide an effective untaxable salary increase, which is a tax shift away from the city. Fuel cost alone is $10/day/vehicle, and TCO is $48 using AAA's estimate of $0.6/mile. SuperShuttle charges $17 to get to SFO, so $10/day is deliberately low-balling it. This means that someone making $80K/year from Google/Mtn View, with subsidized transport, gets an effective $2,500+/year raise, and can outbid someone in the city making $81K/year. In which case, the city ends up with lower taxes. I never said this wasn't complicated, only that there are reasonable arguments for why some people could consider the "buses are better than ..." thesis "having no sound basis (as in fact or law)".
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    FWIW, Google has a SF office that is about as large as Twitter. I also agree with raldi that this line of reasoning is invalid, unless you want Wells Fargo to own & make most of the decisions in SF. (Most of the current SF infrastructure was financed by municipal bonds, many of which were funded by Wells and other Bay-Area financial institutions. My girlfriend used to be a bond-trader at Wells and specifically remembers buying the bonds used to fund construction of the new Bay Bridge.)
- mtviewdave 13y ago
  This is only true in the broadest possible sense, where "taxes", "government" and "streets" are considered collectively without regard to federal, state or local jurisdiction. But in the U.S., jurisdiction matters a lot. For example, there is (apparently) a Google bus stop at the 18th and Dolores Streets in San Francisco. Dolores Street is a local street, which means it is the responsibility of the City of San Francisco. Maintenance of that street is thus paid for primarily with local and fees taxes collected within the City. Specifically property taxes, business license taxes, local sales taxes, and charges for local services. None of the taxes that you mentioned Google paying would directly fund the maintenance of Dolores Street. Google does pay some of these local taxes, because they have a small office in San Francisco. But the purpose of these shuttles is primarily to transport people outside of San Francisco. It's the City of Mountain View that benefits (from a tax perspective) from these shuttles. That disconnect is at the heart of the complaint: that San Francisco taxpayers are shouldering the burden, while not accruing the benefits.
  - raldi 13y ago
    > Google does pay some of these local taxes, because they have a small office in San Francisco 350,000 sqft is not small. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/07/google-epanding-at-hills-plaza-in.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/07/google-...
    - dalke 13y ago
      It's small relative to the Googleplex, which has 2 million sq. ft, and will be 3.1 million sq. ft next year. It's small relative to the number of people who commute from SF to Google by private bus. ("more than 3,500" in 2012, says http://www.sfbg.com/2012/04/18/private-bus-problem; http://www.sfbg.com/2012/04/18/private-bus-problem; I can't find newer numbers in all the noise, but it seems that more commute to MV than work in the SF office.) It's small relative to the market. That is, there's some 84 million sq. ft. of office space in SF. https://www.cassidyturley.com/DesktopModules/CassidyTurley/Download/Download.ashx?contentId=3182&fileName=San+Francisco+Office+Market+Snapshot+Q4+2013.pdf https://www.cassidyturley.com/DesktopModules/CassidyTurley/D... . The vacancy rate is 8%. So Google has under 0.5% of the occupied office space in SF. To double check, the biggest employers are the city/county (25,000), UCSF (20,000), Wells-Fargo (8,200), SF school district (8,200), and Gap (6,000). See http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2014/01/top-5-largest-san-francisco-employers.html?s=image_gallery http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2014/01/top-5-l... . The Wells Fargo Bank headquarters building alone is 640,000 sq. ft. I agree that it's mid-size were it a company primarily based in SF, but for most of the relevant metrics, it's small.