A group of business leaders submitted documents on Wednesday for a voting measure which would repeal the raw revenue tax in Los Angeles, offering some financial help to local employers but also struck a hole of $ 800 million in the city’s budget.
The proposed measure, called “Los Angeles Cost of Living Relief Initiative”, would remove a tax imposed on a wide range of companies: entertainment companies, childcare service providers, law firms, accountants, health care companies, nightclubs, delivery companies and many others, according to the group that submitted it.
Donors have said that the repeal of a tour of the business world would help solve the city’s economic problems, create jobs, allow companies to stay in the city and make the economy “more affordable for all Angelenos”.
“This initiative is the result of the business community to combat the anti-work climate at the Town Hall,” said Nella Mcosker, president and chief executive officer of Central City Assn., A group of companies based in the city center.
Mcosker, one of the five business leaders who signed the ballot proposal, said that city officials “ignored the pleadings of small and medium -sized enterprises for years”. Consequently, dozens of restaurants and other establishments, including the Maya theaterfirmly, she said.
The deposit of the voting proposal immediately sparked alarms at the Town Hall, where those responsible recently signed a plan to dismiss hundreds of workers in the city to try to balance this year’s budget. The city’s commercial tax generates more than $ 800 million a year for the general fund – the part of the budget that pays for police patrols, firefighters, paramedical response and other basic services.
“Public security is almost exclusively paid by the General Fund,” said the administrative manager of the city, Matt Szabo, in an email in Times. “This measure is an assault against public security. Supporters of this measure will be directly responsible for reducing the police or fire in two if they pass. ”
Mcosker, asked questions about the financial problems of Los Angeles, said that the city had a shortfall of $ 1 billion this year and still managed to balance the budget. She is the daughter of the member of the Tim Mcosker municipal council, who sits on the budget committee of five members.
The proposed measure is supported by managers and members of the board of directors with various groups, including the Chamber of Commerce of the Los Angeles Region, the Grande Chamber of Commerce of the San Fernando and Vica valley, the valley industry and ASSN trade.
Vica president Stuart Waldman said that the city’s economy had failed in the middle of an increased series of taxes, higher city expenses and new regulations. The most recent, he said, is the order Hiking in the minimum wage For hotel employees and workers at Los Angeles International Airport at $ 30 an hour by 2028, which was approved by the municipal council for business leaders.
“We generally play the defense,” said Waldman, who also signed the proposal for a ballot. “We decided that the time had come to play as an offense.”
The commercial tax proposal is part of a greater voting battle this year between companies and organized work.
Last month, a group of airlines and hotel industry organizations made around 140,000 signatures for a proposed voting measure overturn the newly approved hotel and the minimum lax wage. County electoral officials currently check these signatures.
Unit here the local section 11, which represents the employees of the hotel, replied with its countermeasures package. We would need an election at the city level on the construction or expansion of hotels, sports stadiums, concert halls and other sites. Another would increase the minimum wage for all workers in the city, by increasing it at the employees of the hotel and the airport.
Two other unit measures here target companies that pay their CEOs more than a hundred times their median employee in Los Angeles, either by forcing them to pay higher commercial taxes, or by setting limits to their use of the city’s property.
The current ballot battle “increases in an imprudent and disconnected manner of the real work of management of a city,” said Council member Katy Yaroslavsky, who heads the Budget Budget Committee. Yaroslavsky, in a statement, said that the fight was “unproductive and must stop”.
“We have just made a billion dollar budgetary gap and the basic services are already seriously tense,” she said. “You do not summarize this by removing one of our largest sources of income without plan to replace it. We have to repair what is broken and it requires working together to offer real solutions. ”
Josué Marcus, spokesperson for the City of the City of Los Angeles, said that supporters of the last voting measure should collect around 140,000 valid signatures to be eligible. The next election of the city is in June 2026. Mcosker, for its part, said that it thought that state law establishes a lower threshold – only 44,000 – for measures which result in the elimination of taxes.
Industry leaders have long since decried the Los Angeles sales tax, which does not concern profits but on the raw revenue which is brought – even when a company undergoes financial loss.
Former mayor Eric Garcetti pleaded for Eliminate the tax More than a decade ago, saying that it puts the city’s economy in a competitive disadvantage. Once in power, he managed to reduce it backIn the midst of concerns that a pure and simple repeal would trigger the reductions in the city services.
The organizers of the last proposal said that it would not cancel commercial taxes on the sale of cannabis or medical marijuana, which have been approved separately by the voters.
