S.F. tax day protest marches on Twitter

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

City nurses, janitors and other workers marched to Twitter's headquarters on tax day Tuesday to deliver a symbolic $56 million bill for the "corporate tax giveaway" that helped persuade the company to move to San Francisco's Mid-Market area.

The protesters passed a craft beer hall, an artisanal burger joint and a 754-unit luxury condominium project that didn't exist before the city in early 2011 offered the tax break to entice businesses to move to the long-forlorn stretch of Market Street and parts of the Tenderloin - areas where the aroma of stale urine would often drift past clusters of men smoking in front of boarded-up storefronts.

... Mayor Ed Lee, business leaders and many others in the city count the Mid-Market tax break as a "remarkable," if still emerging, success story.

... But in a city with stratospheric rents and an income gap that is growing faster than anywhere else in the country, tax benefits for tech companies are a convenient target for progressives on the city's political left, including the Service Employees International Union Local 1021. Politically active SEIU, San Francisco's largest public employee union, is negotiating a new contract with Lee's administration for the 9,500 city employees it represents.

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