Get the Facts: How Prop 15 Will Help California
Learn More about Prop 15's benefits to California's Economy
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California Budget & Policy Center: Key Facts About Proposition 15, California’s Commercial Property Taxes, and Revenue for Schools and Local Communities. According to this analysis, the majority of small businesses in California would see a tax cut under Prop. 15:
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Prop. 15 "could result in tax reductions for more than 4 in 5 of California’s small businesses"
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“The majority of small businesses would not be affected by the measure’s reassessment provisions but would benefit from the new personal property tax exemptions”
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University of California, Santa Cruz: Market Value: How Fair Assessment of California's Commercial Property Values Would Likely Affect Land Use, Urban Development and the Economy.
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“Reforming California's property tax structure to tax commercial properties at their market value would boost the economy by generating new revenue, stimulating development, and diversifying industry”
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"Our analysis identified broad economic benefits of assessing commercial and industrial properties at fair market value—without changing the system for residential properties."
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"Taxing commercial properties at market rates would level the playing field for all landowners and provide a more equitable tax structure for all businesses.”
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“The current system subsidizes older businesses that own their property, creating a competitive disadvantage for businesses that lease or have purchased their property more recently."
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Beacon Economics: Understanding the Impact of Proposition 15 on Small Businesses in California. The findings of this Beacon Economics study showed that small businesses don’t get any savings passed down to them from corporate landlords who benefit from tax breaks, and Prop. 15 would result in the largest corporations and highest-value properties finally paying their fair share.
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“Most claims about Proposition 15’s impacts on small businesses are unfounded ... Prop. 15 will not impact small business renters, including triple net lease tenants”
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"The burden of Prop. 15 would fall on the state’s largest corporations and highest-value properties.”
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“Commercial rents are driven by location, local market conditions, the nature of a local economy (high-wage areas are associated with higher rents), and building age and size. … For average commercial properties, reassessments do not increase rents. Office buildings have a small relationship between reassessments and rents. Reassessing a 20-year-old office building to current market value could lead to a one-time rent increase of roughly 2%.”
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“Properties owned by most small businesses are low-value and therefore shielded by the Prop. 15 exemptions.”
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Blue Sky Consulting Group: Concentration of Revenue Generated by Proposition 15. According to this analysis of Prop. 15, only the top 10% of commercial and industrial properties would generate 92% of the revenue – illustrating the fact that a fraction of top corporations avoid paying their fair share:
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“Rather than the revenues from the initiative coming fairly evenly from all commercial and industrial properties, reassessment of a very small share of all properties will generate the vast majority of the revenues”
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“Reassessing the properties representing 2 percent of all commercial and industrial properties will generate over three-quarters of all of the revenue raised.”
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“The large share of revenues coming from a small percentage of commercial properties results in large part from the fact that those properties are the most under-assessed, meaning that they have the largest gap between their assessed and market values.”
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Urban Institute: Housing and Land Use Implications of Split-Roll Property Tax Reform in California. An Urban Institute study found that Prop. 15 would incentivize residential development, helping aid in California’s housing shortage
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“If passed, Proposition 15 would create incentives for private owners of vacant parcels or those with aging commercial or industrial structures to convert those properties to residential use.”
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“In all four California cities, we found more properties eligible to be converted to residential uses than to be rezoned away from them. We also found that financial incentives for owners and developers to build residential housing increase significantly under split roll.”
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“In every city, private owners stand to gain more in tax savings by converting opportunity properties to residential use than jurisdictions could gain by rezoning at-risk parcels.”
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