Los Angeles is desperate for more of your money. There are so many tax increases in the air, the city may need to hire a team of air traffic controllers just to keep track of them.
There are three city tax increases on the June 2 ballot, not counting the streetlight assessment ballot mailed out to property owners. That’s separate, although the voting for that extra charge also ends on June 2.
Measure CB would apply the city’s cannabis business tax to unlicensed cannabis businesses. “Unlicensed” is another way of saying “illegal.” How is the city going to collect business taxes from an illegal business? Nobody is sure. It’s possible that the city will spend more money trying to enforce cannabis business tax collection than it will ever collect from cannabis businesses.
That’s the level of idiocy in the Los Angeles city government.
A second tax increase on the June ballot is Measure TC. This brainstorm is aimed at shaking down travel booking platforms. Currently, the platforms collect and pay the city’s hotel tax, formally known as the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT), on every hotel room or short-term lodging they sell. However, the platforms don’t pay the tax on their fees or on the discounted portion of the room rate. Measure TC would force them to pay the city’s 14% TOT on every dime they collect from customers, whether for the room, a booking fee or anything else.
Then there’s Measure TT. It would raise the hotel tax in Los Angeles from 14% to 16%. After the 2028 Olympics, the tax would drop from 16% to 15%, at least until the next ballot measure kicks it up again.
If it seems as if Los Angeles politicians are scrounging for lost change in the couch cushions, that’s exactly what’s happening. The city has been wildly overspending, faking a balanced budget with rosy projections of revenue and raids on the city’s budget reserves.
A year ago, city administrative officer Matt Szabo wrote, “employee compensation increases have added over $618 million in obligatory annual costs to the City’s budget in just the last two years.” Liability costs – settlements and judgments – ran $525 million in 2023-24 and 2024-25, over budget by more than $325 million.
Then there’s the L.A. Convention Center. The City Council merrily approved a $2.7 billion expansion plan over the objections of City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who pointed out in September that this will cost “an additional average of $116 million from the General Fund each year for the next 28 years starting in [Fiscal Year] 2029.” Although the renovated facility will bring additional revenues, Mejia said it will take an estimated 55 years for the city to break even.
The city administrative officer’s analysis of the mayor’s proposed budget for 2026-27 highlights additional “areas of concern.” These include the underfunding of police civilian salaries and “obligatory payouts,” as well as “homelessness revenue” and “pension non-compliance.”
That’s another way of saying the budget is balanced except for everything they’re not counting.
The city has already raised trash and sewer fees, and every year the treasury grabs about $220 million of the “excess” revenue the L.A. Department of Water and Power collects by overcharging electricity ratepayers.
Yet more tax increases are planned. City firefighters have collected signatures to place a 0.5% sales tax increase on the November ballot, where it may be joined by a proposal from City Council Member Adrin Nazarian to tax country club golf courses at an annual rate of $4 per square foot. That works out to tens of millions of dollars from each golf course, every year.
Apparently the thinking, if that’s not too strong a word for it, is that golf courses can’t pick up and move to Texas. However, their members certainly can. The November statewide ballot is likely to have two big tax increases that could expedite their move – a tax that confiscates 5% of the wealth of billionaires, and a permanent extension of the “temporary” higher income tax rates that began in 2012.
In California, the top 1% of earners pay about 45% of the total personal income tax collected.
Chasing those taxpayers out of the state is idiotic, even by L.A. government standards.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @SusanShelley