Citizen Portal
Sign In

Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!

Mayor’s office explores revenue-neutral carbon tax but sector impacts complicate plan

San Francisco Planning Commission · September 25, 2008
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

At the Planning Commission hearing, the mayor’s office outlined a revenue-neutral carbon tax concept that would swap higher energy/user taxes for payroll tax relief; officials said sectoral impacts (e.g., biotech, bakeries) and ballot timing create major calibration challenges.

Wade Crowfoot of the mayor’s office described an early concept for a revenue-neutral carbon tax that would shift the city’s tax emphasis from payroll tax toward taxing energy use in commercial buildings, with the goal of incentivizing lower energy consumption while offsetting the revenue loss by reducing payroll taxes.

Crowfoot framed the idea as: “We pay, we actually charge a payroll tax to local businesses. So we’re essentially taxing something that we want to encourage,…

Already have an account? Log in

Subscribe to keep reading

Unlock the rest of this article — and every article on Citizen Portal.

  • Unlimited articles
  • AI-powered breakdowns of topics, speakers, decisions, and budgets
  • Instant alerts when your location has a new meeting
  • Follow topics and more locations
  • 1,000 AI Insights / month, plus AI Chat
30-day money-back on paid plans