{"id":136,"date":"2009-07-05T23:10:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-05T23:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terragrafix.com\/blog\/?p=136"},"modified":"2009-07-05T23:10:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-05T23:10:00","slug":"opinion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/?p=136","title":{"rendered":"Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size:180%;\"><span style=\"font-size:130%;\"><strong><br \/>Big Business Needs to Pay Their Share<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">by Scott Donahue<\/p>\n<p>Our city must raise more money to support the general fund because sales tax revenue<br \/>has severely declined. Where is this money going to come from? Every city has a business license tax and every business in Emeryville earning more than $5,000 in gross receipts must pay this tax. Businesses pay a percentage of their gross receipts whether they earn a profit or not.<\/p>\n<p>There is, however, an exception: big business.<\/p>\n<p>Big business in Emeryville is required to pay tax only on the first $3 million of gross receipts. The rest is entirely tax-free. Why is this? Why should small business pay proportionally so much more than big business? Emeryville has among the lowest business tax rates of any city in the Bay Area. The city council majority has always argued that it must provide incentives to big business so as not to lose them to other cities. This is absurd. Emeryville is among the most desirable places to do business in the Bay Area. We have the ability to collect taxes in a more equitable way. If big business were to pay what small business pays our general fund would gain much needed revenue.<\/p>\n<p>I believe we could easily raise our overall business tax rate and not lose business to other<br \/>cities. I pay taxes to other cities where I do business, and all of them have significantly higher tax rates than Emeryville.<\/p>\n<p><em>Scott Donahue is a 32- year resident and business owner in Emeryville. He chairs the city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee, whose members are appointed annually by the City Council.<strong><\/strong><\/em><br \/><\/span><strong><span style=\"font-size:180%;\"><br \/><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesecretnewsonline.com%2F%3Fp%3D136\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"true\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big Business Needs to Pay Their Share by Scott Donahue Our city must raise more money to support the general fund because sales tax revenuehas severely declined. Where is this money going to come from? Every city has a business &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/?p=136\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}