How does that saying go? Make the tax payers responsible for the government's poor decisions... take credit for private (in this case, municipality) successes, which aren't shared with the tax payer.

I hope this doesn't happen. The government in California is an absolute mess and deserves everything coming to them.

privatize the wins, socialize the losses

I don't understand the endless repeating of this phrase. The taxes to spend comes from private individuals and corporations. There are no "social" sources of money.

> The taxes to spend comes from private individuals and corporations.

That is the social. The phrase is saying

"If I win I get the prize, if I lose everyone else has to make me whole"

I don't see how that works in this context.

I don't think that "privatize the wins, socialize the losses" fits the particular article, merely explaining the phrase itself.

I think reidjs was replying to the NDizzle's comment by clarifying the saying, not arguing that it's the case here.

I'm not entirely sure I follow NDizzle's initial argument, taken at face value I read their argument as the state government shouldn't interfere with local corruption because the state government because they allowed things like this to happen in the first place and they deserve it.

And to be clear, I on my use of corruption here, I consider it corruption because apple gets a kickback for directing all the sales tax to Cupertino instead of to all the municipalities where the product is actually be sold to. If apple didn't get that kickback I wouldn't consider it corruption, just stupid tax laws.

> There are no "social" sources of money.

"private individuals and corporations" is the society who is paying the taxes. You identified that correctly.

"privatise profits" means that a select few gets the profits, and "socialise losses" means everyone pays for the costs. Which is obviously a very good deal for the select few. This is what the phrase means. Happy to help.

Normally I would be very much in support of this as I never really liked money becoming more concentrated among the few. But given how great (sarcasm) of a job California is doing as a government I think I'd rather just end the California government then end some tax deal.

Seriously. This state has become such a shit place to live it doesn't deserve anymore taxes.

Actually maybe this deal will make apple move to Texas. It must be some sort of elaborate plan by those extreme geniuses in Sacramento. Make sf great again by pushing apple out.

I live in California and I think both state and local gov do a good job. The people are competent and nice and the results are pretty good.

Thanks for saying that. Completely agree. Lignins perfect but for some reason California gets overly negative perceptions

Children often need to be protected from their own parents and this fact is broadly accepted by Californians, which is why the people express via their legislature their disdain for reactionary ideas from red states.

Being in tech, personally things are going well but CoL has skyrocketed and I worry about future generations.

My neighborhood is filled with wealthy foreigners who don’t work, but simply bought a nice house on OC, sometimes as a third or fourth house.

So do I. Not only do I live here but I grew up here. Roughly 40 years. I respectfully disagree with you.

With all the homeless people, housing crisis and companies and people moving out of California largely because of government policies I'd say the government is doing a bad job.

Land use policy is the main driver for cost of living and homelessness. It has little to do with state gov policy (if anything state level policy is focused on fixing the problems over the objections of small cities) and it has nothing to do with execution by state agencies. Housing is not expensive because the gov is somehow incompetent.

The way states in USA compete with each other by giving corporations infinite tax breaks is super toxic. Seems if you are big enough you never have to pay tax, but if you are a regular joe opening a nail salon, bend over

Countries do it too. Looking at you, Ireland.

It's not toxic. Competition is the only factor that makes things better, or at least stops them getting worse.

I think the competition argument is stronger when considering competition between states. What seems more towards the toxic side is when within a state some businesses get tax breaks and others don't based on lobbying effort and not based on some broader policy that is neutral towards specific businesses.

I agree with that, but it's difficult to say what cities should or shouldn't be able to enact. They do have different requirements to their region, and you wouldn't want e.g. a minimum wage law that might be appropriate for a city to destroy employability in the rest of the state.

Simple - bespoke deals. You cant jusy offer a deal to Microsoft for example, you have tk offer the same deal/tax breaks to everyone who writes software.

If Microsoft doesnt need to pay taxes, then I shouldn't have to either. Or we all pay.

Its at every level of government. Suburbs fighting other suburbs to give a huge tax break to a potential office where the workers have the off chance of spending some sales taxes buying a cup of coffee in the city. Usually the workers don’t even live in the suburb where they work so they aren’t paying into all those larger tax pools, merely being a burden on the road system. Then when the tax break starts to expire the company extorts the government to maintain it or they simply leave.

> This state has become such a shit place to live

> Make sf great again by pushing apple out.

So the current status of SF must mean the whole state is like that? You started off the sarcastic note but switched to saying seriously, thanks for the sweeping statement.

> Actually maybe this deal will make apple move to Texas.

Eh, people leave for no individual income tax then get hit by the even higher property taxes.

Quick napkin math based on simple google searches:

Most tech workers will be paying 9.3% in CA State Income tax, let's assume they move to Texas with a $150k job. That's $13,950 fewer taxes paid on income to CA.

Moving to Texas they'll pay about an average $2263 more in property Taxes to TX. Probably a bit more realistically so let's say $4000 since they'll probably be buying property that's above the average price. That's still around a $10k/year raise, with lower cost of living and lower crime, and that's assuming they didn't negotiate a raise which is unlikely.

As a Texan who moved and bought a home IN California, you’re forgetting about CA Prop 13 (which has its own giant set of problems)— in California, property taxes are not re-assessed after the purchase of the home. In Texas, they are every year _at market rate_. There was a cap introduced in 2022, but it’s still a cap of 10%/year. In many high demand city neighborhoods, you are indeed seeing property taxes grow at 8-10% year.

As far as the $2263-4000 difference in property tax the first year, where are you getting that? Texas’ property rate is about 2.12% of market value, forever (it can be more or less, depending on local programs and school districts, but is usually around there) California’s is 0.77%-1.07% the year you buy and is essentially frozen forever. So a $500k house in TX (which is _no longer_ enough for an in-demand Austin or Dallas neighborhood) will often carry the tax tag of a $1m CA home. An $700-1m house in TX (which _is_ where a home in an in demand Dallas neighborhood begins to start) carries roughly the tax burden of a $1.4-2m CA home.

That’s a lot more than people expect! And your payment will be increasing, sometimes significantly, forever!

Inability of online weirdos to understand marginal tax rates: example ++N.

The California state income tax on a gross of $150k would be $10730, not $13950. Furthermore, the deductions come off the top marginal rate, so if you are taking the standard deduction, maxing out your 401(k) contributions etc knock several thousand dollars off that figure.

Fair enough but that calculus only gets better for moving the higher the salary is, $150k was just a starting point and I believe most experienced devs in the bay area make a lot more then that, are likely to have families in need of stable communities and their spouse's income might double the reason to move, if they have one.

A 2-income family with 1-2 experienced devs working at major Bay Area companies could easily make over a million. But that only means they are rich as hell, it doesn't mean they are middle class. Median income in Santa Clara county is $140k so $150k was already a bit high as a starting point for middle class experience.

I won't argue that California isn't squeezing out lower incomes. That much is clear. But you're overestimating what that income is. Lower income families leave California because of housing costs, not because of income taxes. The median California household owes < $1000/yr in state income taxes.

Someone must have read the priming chapter in "Thinking Fast and Slow", and is trying to apply it to California politics. Repeating the same line over and over on any forum they can find to repeat the same drivel. I'm quite happy with the California government.

California is a shitty state for normal middle class people on many objective measures. It has some of the worst schools in the country, outperforming only Deep South states and Oklahoma and West Virginia. It has the highest cost of living adjusted poverty rate in the country: https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/11/lower-california-h.... It has net domestic out migration, meaning that more people are leaving instead of coming in. Despite all that, it also has the highest tax burden of any state.

Yes, people talk about California a lot, but only because it’s such a clear A/B test result. It went from being a prosperous red state to being a dysfunctional blue state within a single generation.

Never read the book. So your response is not only incorrect but I have no clue about what you're talking about.

A better response is to spell out your disagreement so that I can understand it without having to read a book.

It's a tactic used by spin meisters in other states to influence people who have probably never been to California. "Look over there at the liberals, see what a mess they've made in their own state".

I visited California and immediately saw a lot of homeless penises. The spin meisters prepared me correctly.

I live in San Francisco. I've also lived in LA. For roughly all 40 years of my life.

Yup. It’s a shit state now, I used to live up in Northern California for a while. Proposals for the 51st state of Jefferson have been gaining popularity again. I’d love to see it happen as it would probably get me to move back to that region, but not under the current governance.

What does SF have to do with Cupertino?

You think that ending this deal will make Apple move to Texas? Lol, fat chance, the people that work for Apple are among the very few that can actually afford to live in and enjoy the Bay Area

I grew up in Cupertino. Cupertino and SF are part of the Bay area. Pretty similar issues.

It's worse in SF, but you can still see those RV caravans behind the Cupertino target. It's the same housing crisis happening across the bay.

All the I love living in California and state government is doing a great job folks, let’s make an honest review of the sunshine state:

1. Homelessness: 6 of the 10 cities with largest homeless population are in Cali. We’ve all been to SF, last time I was there a homeless person literally opened his pants and shit in front of a family restaurant (we all had to leave). So it’s probably the worst in this state compared to all states in US.

2. Housing market: Easily the Bay Area is the worst in the US, probably worst in the entire world to be honest. Entirely self inflicted.

3. Crime: it is NOT NORMAL to have to leave your windows and trunks open when you park to stop criminals from breaking your cars. For the brief period I lived in Seattle, I realized people can just park a car and leave it like that in Seattle, while in sf I’m perpetually paranoid.

For this level of government service we have to deal with the highest taxes seen in this country and plans to consistently increase taxes. A bad joke, if Apple ran the government they’d do a better job tomorrow.

1. Numbers-wise, this is largely a problem with #2. Most homeless aren't the sidewalk shitting variety. In general, California cities don't round up and kick out their homeless. I never saw sidewalk shitting homeless when I lived in SF, but my understanding is it's gotten worse since I moved out. I live in a suburb of LA and have never seen sidewalk shit down here, unless it was deposited by a dog.

2. This is largely a city-level problem. The state of California is trying to solve it. The cities are NIMBYs and always want someone else to house all the people.

3. This sounds like an SF problem. Again, I don't live there anymore. Keep in mind that less than 3% of the population of California lives in SF.

Original poster here. Lived 10 years in LA and grew up in the bay.

You're right sf is worse.

LA used to be better. Less homeless people. Its largely getting worse and going in the same direction as sf.

It won't ever be as bad as sf because la is simply not dense enough. However the underlying problems are all there and it's getting worse. Santa Monica used to be much nicer. SF is the direction LA is heading towards.

The state is massive. Your review can be summarized to the Bay Area or other major metro areas. Saying the entire state sucks because some large progressive cities are having issues found all over our country is a very weak argument.

The majority of the population lives in those metro areas. Seems dark to say it affects most Californians.

Source: former NY state resident, the shit flowed downhill from the city, and we all suffered.

Well one and two and directly connected. Anyway on a per capita basis, DC has the worst homeless problem.

Crime is not an issue. Seriously. It’s not. It’s still at historic lows. Stop pearl clutching. Regardless, the SFPD (and cops in general) do not stop crime. Decades of blank checks, and nothing changes except more lawsuits. Fuck the cops.

There are 4 lights.

In all seriousness, if people think it's a problem telling them "it's all in their head" isn't an effective argument.

Dismissing legitimate concerns with abstract (to them) statistics will only drive away the people you most want to reach. The statistics are made of millions of individual perspectives.

Maybe you’d be more effective if you didn’t chime in with schoolmarm finger wagging about how we have to just accept absolute propaganda, ol’ Mx The-World-Is-Both-Flat-And-Round

anybody wealthy with 5 minutes of asset planning can avoid california taxes

thats why they’re not really leaving

buy $10mm worth of 30 year US treasuries today and make $500,000/yr, only paying federal income tax on that

its really not that hard.

(core inflation is lower than the treasury rates right now, and for things that rise faster in sure you’ll figure out how to buy orange juice.)

and entrepreneurs have so many deductions against their income its insane, only high earning wage workers have the issue but think their situation just gets worse as they get richer when thats not really the case

High recommend reading the article. Seems like the CDTFA couldn’t balance their books and now is making the city of Cupertino the major loser rather than Apple. In fairness, routing all CA tax through Cupertino didn’t make much sense in the first place.

Just go clarify matters for anyone not living in California: Cupertino is not a charter city, enjoys zero deference from the state, has no right to home rule or any of that nonsense. General law cities are strictly administrative subdivisions of the state and exist to execute and promulgate state policies.

Yet we end up with a state that wants more housing and general law cities which do their best to block housing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The state legislature is gradually remembering their powers, which include simply dissolving general law cities with a majority vote. But mostly the state is just suing them and using funding powers to coerce them.

It seems unlikely everyone in Sacramento forgot about the differences between types of municipalities, at any point in time.

Eh, actually I think you'd find if you were to become involved in state-level legislation that the elected members themselves have no idea. They are also largely unaware of the powers or even the existence of local agency formation commissions. Some of them have staffers who know the deal, some don't.

Thanks. I never knew about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city#California

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-law_municipality#Calif...

Maybe its time to make a charter real quick to keep future revenue. I wonder what the process is.

The nimbys and 'fiscal libertarians' of the area will take great umbrage to you messing with their bottom line; but there is a glimmer of hope with the sb-35 inroads forcing new higher density housing into the area.

I like to mental model the south bay area as chicago pre-greatfire/civil war era; it has expanded all it can on land and it must go under to be built up. We're just watching an economic wild fire in slow motion as it immolates 'the way things are', clearing out the old growth for a new meadow to take route.

Would be better if they were annexed by Sunnyvale. Cupertino voters regularly elect people who think Apple employees shouldn't be allowed to live in the city because they'll hire prostitutes and molest local high school students. (Direct quote.)

> Since 1998, Apple has declared all of its online sales made in California as having taken place in Cupertino.

How did anyone think that was okay, and how did it escape notice for 25 years.

This came from an era when online purchases did not have sales tax

And yet even Amazon complied and now computes tax based on where the buyer is.

As does B&H.

Years ago (approaching, if not a decade ago).

So does Apple, for even longer than Amazon and B&H since Apple has had physical locations in most states for longer than Amazon and B&H, so they always had to remit sales tax to most states.

Uh, no? This entire article is how Apple declares all online sales to have happened in Cupertino, regardless of where the buyer is.

Amazon doesn't do that, they say the sale happened where the buyer is.

B&H does the same.

Apple says "it happened in Cupertino, so we'll pay taxes related to Cupertino and our special tax agreement with Cupertino".

That is a California specific situation that applies to California taxes and California’s local governments’ portion of those taxes. If you are in any state, Apple still collects and remits sales tax for that state.

Amazon/B&H example was that they were not collecting sales taxes in states they did not have a physical presence in, until the South Dakota Wayfair ruling.

Technically correct, but in practice if you bought something online from out of state it was subject to your state's use tax, which had the same rate as your state's sales tax.

But your state could not make the seller collect the use tax for the state so instead consumers were required to report those purchases to their state and pay the tax.

Almost no consumer did that, except for items that had to be registered like cars where the state would not allow registration if the use tax was not paid, and so the use tax was widely openly evaded.

For online purchases where the buyer and seller were in the same state the state did have the power to make the seller collect sales tax and I believe most states did.

It was pretty common though for the tax to be the sales tax at the seller's location, not the buyer's location. And not just in the US--prior to 2015 a seller in an EU country selling online to a buyer in another EU country collected their own country's VAT not the buyer's country's VAT.

A few years ago the Supreme Court in the US decided that states could make online sellers in other states collect for them. I believe it is technically use tax that is collected in this case, not sales tax, but since the rates are the same and most consumers weren't even aware of use taxes, so everybody just calls it sales tax.

Boiling the frog. First online purchases were tax free, Then local governments wanted a cut. Now the state wants a cut.

If you're going to have sales taxes (or consumption taxes in general) at all, it makes no sense for them not to apply to online purchases. That situation was only in place for a brief time because of a weird interpretation of Constitutional law which would never have been made had internet commerce existed at the scale it does now. This isn't "the terrifying creeping overreach of government", this is "sales taxes working how they're obviously supposed to."

It would be preferable if the government held the buyer responsible for paying sales taxes.

Moving everything to electronic payments should make this possible. Then it would be even possible to implement marginal sales taxes, so that you are progressively taxing consumption. Which would make it impossible to avoid taxes by being so wealthy that you can take a loan out to fund your lifestyle and hence not have to pay income taxes.

Any tax needs to balance how nice and efficient it is on paper with how practical it is to collect in the real world.. Replacing both income and capital gains taxes with a single wealth tax would be theoretically most efficient and incentive-aligned, but wealth taxes are extremely difficult to administer in real life, so we don't do them and instead have income and capital gains taxes as an imperfect but easy-to-collect proxy.

It's the same thing with "buyer-reported sales taxes": nice in theory, impossible in practice (note that this isn't a hypothetical: as others have mentioned in the thread, before sales taxes were extended to internet purchases you were supposed to report internet purchases as use taxes, which approximately nobody did).

Right, but with electronic payments, total purchase amounts can be reported to the government, just like income is reported now.

And you do not have to worry about figuring out valuations of a million different kinds of wealth or who owns what. A much simpler formula for taxation, you spend up to $x, tax rate is y%, and so on and so forth.

> you were supposed to report internet purchases as use taxes, which approximately nobody did

There was an article on here a few days ago about someone trying to do so and no one at the state tax office could figure out what was actually needed for them to do so.

There is a place to do that on your state income taxes at the end of the year. I'm not sure how no one at the state tax office would not know that, they have an easy to understand website. Alternatively, you can report it directly to them.

https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/use-tax.htm#Overview

Not all states have income tax

Sorry, it was an article about California, figured that was what we were talking about

fair enough, as a Washingtonian I sometimes forget that others have to deal with state income tax, definitely makes sense it'd just be part of yearly tax paperwork you already have to do.

From a quick google I think a lot of the additional confusion is the mix of Use/Sales tax when they mostly (as a customer) have the same meaning but for a tax authority have different meaning, searching for "Washington how to declare sales tax" turns up a bunch of random stuff about regulations for retailers showing sales tax correctly, if you search for "Washington how to declare use tax" actually brings up the correct documents from the state, I can def see some bureaucrat not connecting that that's what was actually meant.

This is about the state / local split. Right now California receives 6.25% and Cupertino receives 1%, regardless of where a California buyer lives, the processing location, or the point of purchase.

only sedated and braindead frogs stay in the slowly boiling pot, check the source for that idiom

TBH, that reinforces the idiom.

Stupid question, but why should a state get sales tax for something bought online?

I guess the idea of sales tax is that the sales was facilitated by the state through things like roads and infrastructure. But is it true for online sales? It's certainly less true than something I buy downtown main Street. So what gives?

If you want the gory details here's the Supreme Courts opinion in the case that allowed it: South Dakota v. Wayfar, Inc., et al. [1].

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf

The answer is because the Sales tax is formally the Sales and Use tax. The tax is generally on the use of a purchase, which is facilitated by the services of the State beyond just the sale. It's collected at point of sale as that's easiest. If not collected at point of sale, it's still due as a Use tax.

the fun part: "Then under the same deal, Cupertino actually returns approximately one third of this revenue to Apple."

these kinds of things inspire me as a version of “land of opportunity” that are different and more useful than what I was taught

What I think is disingenuous is that Cupertino surely raises property taxes right? Why would they be worried about a reduction in sales tax, i haven’t checked their finances though

It's because they've gotten used to the money and almost no one anywhere wants less of it.

Property taxes don't pay for much in California because of how Prop 13 works. Schools in nice areas like Cupertino rely on parents' donations.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Unless you’re a corporation. Special tax treatment for anyone should be illegal. Pay your fucking taxes.

Edit: angrier

> When someone shares an opinion online that seems disconnected from the complexities or the practical realities of the situation, and it appears that their viewpoint or proposed solution is not grounded in the way systems currently operate, you might describe their commentary as: _____

You fill in the blanks.

Either contribute to the discussion or don’t speak. HN isn’t the place to recite riddles from your high horse.

I found it substantive because it sparks introspection

BS.

Also they don't have to die.

> Pay your fucking taxes.

Not just that, but pay a fair amount of taxes!

I'm not saying that apple needs to pay more taxes because they're big, I'd be happy if they paid the same amount (in percent, not total sum) as a small local mom-and-pop companies pay.

Special tax treatment makes the playing field uneven, makes the game unfair.

taxes aren’t about fairness they’re about one form of revenue for the state that the state is in competition for amongst other states and has to earn

there are other forms of revenue

there is the option of balancing a budget

and its absurd to have an argument based on everyone getting hosed equally, without considering why theyre getting hosed at all, especially when most of the arguments apply equally to a 1% tax as they do to a 70% progressive tax.

state entities can enter into contracts, but I’d be interested in seeing what a patch to that capability would look like

I'm assuming you're familiar with Wayfair vs. South Dakota?

I wonder if Mountain View does the same thing with the Goog's online/ad sales.

AliExpress collects the 10% calif local and state sales on my international order. What are the odds that extra 10% gets forwarded to Sacramento?

100%.

The sales and use tax returns of companies that import more than a few thousand $ in goods into CA in a year are audited at least every other year, and they are quick to levy penalties.

For dropshipping companies with a significant amount of sales tax collected from CA customers, the sales tax they collected from you probably got to Sacramento before your item was even loaded onto a ship headed east.

Aliexpress is not a cali company importing... Its a small foreign merchant in an opaque country exporting into Calif. All Calif sees is a parcel delivered. I don't see how Calif has any jurisdictional powers to assert audits on a small chinese merchant in china.

Ali Express has an office in San Mateo, California...

Ali Express is one of the largest merchantile organizations in the world by shipment volume, and one of the largest importers of record in the U.S.

U.S. Customs provides customs records to local taxing authorities, who have always had the power of taxation over imported goods. (Import taxes aka customs duties have been around since at least Ancient Mesopotamia, circa BC 1900.)