The Coalition for Homelessness in San Francisco took advantage of the city’s mayoral fluctuation to garner support for its initiative that aims to tax local businesses in order to help the needy.
But the proposed tax has drawn some unexpected battle-lines.
The organization’s push came after mayor Ed Lee died unexpectedly in December of last year. Over the next seven months, the city saw two more mayors and an election that dragged out for a week, leaving legislation up in the air and affording advocates time to gain signatures.
What the charitable group didn’t bank on was the millions of dollars in support it would garner from Marc Benioff — the CEO and co-founder of Salesforce, San Francisco’s largest private employer, main tenant and naming rights-holder of the tallest skyscraper in the city, Wired reported.
Benioff also called out his fellow billionaires, by name, on social media to step up, too. Many of them, however, weren’t happy.
“There is a kind of hypnosis that goes around, that businesses should not support taxes,” Benioff told the tech site. “The reality is, unbridled capitalism is not good for anybody, including all the companies benefitting from it. We want society to be successful. We are connected to it, not apart from it.”
Benioff said that Twitter and Square, for example, — whose CEO, Jack Dorsey, opposes the proposition — benefitted greatly in tax deductions for opening its headquarters in downtown SF, saying the companies “made it in San Francisco, on the backs of the people of San Francisco.”
“The companies that have given the least are the ones who are opposing this the most,” he continued.
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