The Hill reports:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Friday sounded off against a San Francisco measure to increase corporate taxes that would give the city more funding to tackle its homeless crisis.
Dorsey said he was opposed to San Francisco’s Proposition C because he believes one of companies he leads as CEO, Square, will be taxed at unfair rates compared to other major companies, such as Salesforce.
The Twitter head wrote in a series of tweets that with the proposition’s passage, Square could potentially face more than $20 million in taxes in 2019 compared to Salesforce.
A thread on San Francisco’s Prop C. As a citizen of SF since 1999, and likely for the rest of my life, my primary objective is to help set our newly elected Mayor @LondonBreed up for success. That means addressing homelessness long-term in a scalable way, with accountability.
— jack (@jack) October 19, 2018
While I understand an influx of cash is attractive, the mayor has said she doesn’t have the accountability or controls she needs to manage it well. Ultimately, she is the only one on the hook to make this work. If she doesn’t feel she can, we need to listen and understand why.
— jack (@jack) October 19, 2018
I admit that while I come at this as a citizen first, there’s an unfairness I see in my role of CEO of Square (this does not apply to Twitter). Companies like Square and Stripe would be taxed at a significantly larger total contribution than much larger companies like Salesforce.
— jack (@jack) October 19, 2018
Hypothetically Square could pay over $20m more in 2019, while Salesforce (4x bigger than Sq) pays less than $10m. Taxes would grow at rates multiple times our adj. revenue, which no company can sustain. Not an issue for Salesforce/Twitter, but unfair to Sq and fintech startups.
— jack (@jack) October 19, 2018
We’re happy to pay our taxes. We just want to be treated fairly with respect to our peer companies, many of whom are 2-10x larger than us. Otherwise we don’t know how to practically grow in the city. That’s heartbreaking for us as we love SF and want to continue to help build it.
— jack (@jack) October 19, 2018