
For years, the City Council has given the city’s biggest businesses the biggest tax breaks. Residents and small business owners in town have begun to ask why. On Tuesday, the City Council will decide whether to put an initiative on the November ballot asking voters to decide whether the city’s multi-billion dollar businesses should pay what every other business pays. Here’s the story on the city’s current business tax: Every city has a business license tax and every business in Emeryville grossing more than $5,000 must pay this tax. Businesses pay a percentage of their gross receipts whether they earn a profit or not. But the city’s big business — Pixar, Novartis, and Bayer, to name a few — which make billions in profits every year, are required to pay tax only on the first $146 million they earn. The rest is entirely tax-free. The pat reason given by the City Council majority is it must provide incentives so as not to lose big business to other cities. Yet Emeryville is among the most desirable places to do business in the Bay Area (see story in Business/Economy section on Santen moving its US headquarters to Emeryville). So, the City Council