Opinion ID: 1412641
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Taxing Commuters

Text: Various assertions were made in connection with the San Francisco tax as to the number of commuters affected by the tax. ( Alameda case, supra, 19 Cal. App.3d at p. 752; Comment, supra, 20 Hastings L.J. at p. 824, fn. 82.) Actual figures covering cities in California were released by the Census Bureau in June of 1973. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population: 1970, Subject Reports: Journey to Work. (Issued June 1973.)) The figures disclosed were dramatic illustration of the tremendous movement of workers in and out of central cities. Although the study indicated that many residents did not disclose their place of employment, among those who did disclose it was revealed that there were more nonresident commuters working in the City of Oakland in 1970 than residents there employed. The figures were 81,000 nonresident workers as compared with only 70,931 resident workers. ( Id., p. 198.) It appeared that a tax levied on gross income of all residents and nonresidents employed in Oakland in 1970 would have resulted in 151,931 taxpayers; a tax on all residents employed in Oakland would have resulted in 70,931 taxpayers. The situation in Oakland was reflected in other cities as well. For San Francisco, it was 419,831 resident and nonresident workers compared with 252,658 resident workers ( Id., p. 200); for Sacramento, 153,792 resident and nonresident workers compared with 68,099 resident workers ( Id., p. 186, again, more nonresident than resident workers); for Palo Alto, 50,282 resident and nonresident workers compared with only 10,325 resident workers. ( Id., p. 203, substantially more nonresident than resident workers.) The Oakland tax was, it would appear, in a real sense, a commuter tax, even though levied on both residents and nonresidents. The release of this data in 1973 brings us full circle to the adoption of the subject tax in June of 1974. Let us now turn to the first question posed.