A report released by the offices of the city controller and treasurer finds that remote workers abandoning their San Francisco offices has blown an estimated $484 million hole in the city’s tax haul.
The $484 million in tax revenue the city lost via empty seats in downtown offices represents about a third of the overall Gross Receipts Tax and Homelessness Gross Receipts Tax haul.
The report also found that the city’s 2021 tax haul and gross domestic product reached all-time highs. That tax haul, though diminished, still measured around $1.3 billion in 2021.
As of 2022, the five largest companies in this city, representing 0.04 percent of the city’s businesses, accounted for a quarter of all business tax revenue.
The city’s 100 largest companies, a 0.7 percent sliver of the overall total, pay 58 percent of the business taxes.
The fewer sources of major business tax revenue the city has, the more volatile this funding becomes. If even one of those top-five businesses has a bad year, the city stands to lose a significant part of its income.
