> That's like saying that having to buy a chair is a disincentive to hiring.

Is that not a bad thing? A chair might be a bad comparison, because a chair is essential to workplace ergonomics and therefore the health of employees, but this tax has no direct benefit to the workplace. If our assumption is that hiring employees is one of the most important functions of our society, then shouldn't the barriers to hiring employees be kept as absolutely low as possible?

> but this tax has no direct benefit to the workplace

Which taxes do?

Sure they do ... they (ostensibly) go to paying for the infrastructure that supports that workplace: the roads and mass transit that leads from the worker's home to the workplace, the police and fire brigade that protect's the workplace's capital investments, etc.

That's not to say that tax funds are always perfectly allocated ... of course they're not. But they're not worthless either.

I think the point was that the chair viewed as a per-employee "tax" has benefit to the employer, but this head tax doesn't.

The tax has a benefit because we'll have better infrastructure to take care of things that make the city better. In this case helping homeless. I do want to help everyone, but for people that must have a personal improvement getting homeless people treatment and places to stay helps you because they aren't in the way. Having roads, cops, buses, and ambulances helps me too, but I also value those because I want to live in a better society that takes care of all its members.

Whether the tax has value to the employer is not well defined one way or the other. I suppose it comes down to the balance between utility derived and cost as with all economic issues.