Photo by Timothy Krause via Flickr
On 31 October 2025, a coalition of labor unions filed paperwork to circulate petitions for an initiative to be placed on the ballot for the June 2026 election to further raise taxes on businesses in which the highest-paid manager makes 100 times or more than median employees based in The City. The unions joining forces in this effort include Service Employees International Union Locals (SEIU) 2015, 1021, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299, Teamsters Joint Council 7 and the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
According to SFTreasurer.Org, the Overpaid Executive Gross Receipts Tax, approved by San Francisco voters on 3 November 2020 and effective from the first day of 2022, charges an additional 0.1% gross receipts tax and an additional payroll tax rate of 0.4% on businesses in which the executive pay ratio is greater than 100:1 but less than or equal to 200:1. For every hundred the pay ratio breaches, the gross receipt tax is raised by 0.1% and the payroll tax by 0.4%. By this metric, if the CEO is earning 600 times what the worker is being paid, that company will be subject to a gross receipts tax rate of 0.6% and an additional payroll tax rate of 2.4%.
According to the AFL-CIO, in fiscal year 2024, Salesforce, based in San Francisco, stated that its CEO, Marc Benioff earned 308 times as much as his workers did while Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, also headquartered in The City, earned 424 times as much as the drivers were paid. To give an idea of how exorbitant those figures are, about half a century ago, the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio was only just shy of 27:1.
This proposal is the second of its kind submitted to the Department of Elections. Previously, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan and three of her colleagues filed paperwork for a proposed business-tax measure slated for the November 2026 ballot to raise the Overpaid Executive Tax and specifically use it on private transportation services such as Uber, Lyft and Waymo, famous (and somewhat infamous) for its self-driving vehicles. With the signature of four City Supervisors, this measure automatically qualified for the November 2026 ballot. However, both measures were created separately and not coordinated – a simple case of great minds thinking alike.
Both measures would override reductions of the “overpaid” executive tax that voters approved in November 2024 as part of Proposition M. Labor unions have noted that Prop M gave corporations an excessive financial cushion amid rampant income inequality. Although Proposition L, a measure to tax Uber, Lyft and Waymo to fund the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was on the ballot alongside Prop M and received majority approval in the election, there was a provision in Prop M to the effect that if Prop L received fewer votes, it would be scuppered.
The initiatives would also recalibrate the formula for calculating CEO to worker pay ratios by including employees living inside and outside of San Francisco. As the projected revenues from both initiatives are not reserved for a specific purpose, both measures would only require a simple majority to pass.
