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Twitter Still A San Francisco Tweet

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Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2011 14:52

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LionKiller

Special tax break in hand, Twitter is staying in San Francisco. The company announced Friday that it has signed a lease to move its headquarters to a building in the city's Central Market area following months of haggling with San Francisco officials over a payroll tax break.

"The city where we have started and grown will remain our future home," wrote Twitter spokesman Sean Garrett on the company's official blog.

Garrett said that in mid-2012, Twitter would move its headquarters to the historic Market Square building in a run-down commercial zone that San Francisco officials hope to revitalize.

Twitter had been engaged in a months-long campaign to secure a payroll tax break from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in return for staying in the city and agreeing to relocate to the troubled mid-Market Street area.

San Francisco lawmakers approved the "Twitter tax break" on Tuesday, despite heated resistance from some quarters.

Board of Supervisors budget analyst Harvey Rose has estimated that Twitter will save around $22 million over six years thanks to legislation that freezes payroll taxes over that period for companies located along the mid-Market corridor.

Also this week, a San Francisco supervisor introduced legislation that would further amend the city's payroll tax code—seen as a further move to encourage high-tech San Francisco-based startups like Twitter, Zynga and Yelp to stay in the city.

If Supervisor Mark Farrell's legislation passes, it would eliminate a 1.5 percent payroll tax on stock options, which San Francisco has defined as taxable employee compensation since 2004.

According to reports, San Francisco is the only city in the U.S. that taxes stock options.