March 27, 2008
$3 Million Tax Cut for Poor Larry Ellison
Here at SFist, we don't like to name call -- mostly. But sometimes there are certain stories that we read with (a lot of) choice swear words on our tongue. So pardon us while we play this story as straight as we can; we'll leave the incendiary comments to you.
Larry Ellison, CEO of software company Oracle Corp., will be given a $3 million tax cut on his property located in San Mateo County. The 23-acre site, remodeled after a "Japanese emperor's 16th century country residence," according to the Gate, has been declared by Ellison and his lawyers as "functionally obsolete."
Despite $200 million in construction costs, the property is valued at $64.7 million; the property compound can be claimed as obsolete because "there is a finite market for high-end luxury homes, limited appeal for 16th-century Japanese architecture and the 'over improvements' and 'excessive' landscaping are costly to maintain."
Who knew?
San Mateo granted Ellison the tax break, despite the obvious benefits a cool $3 mil could have brought San Mateo County. According to a breakdown in the article, here are the city programs that would have stood to benefit from the taxes:
The largest proportion of San Mateo County property taxes, 45.1 percent, goes to school districts, followed by 21.5 percent for the county general fund, 16.7 percent to cities and 7.5 percent to redevelopment agencies. Woodside will lose about $78,000 from the $130,000 in property taxes it collected on the Mountain Home Road property during the past few years, Town Manager Susan George said.
Bah. It's not like school districts ever need extra money. We all know Larry doesn't have the cash, anyway.
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What a dickhead. Let's see if Larry wants to swap my small obsolete 1 bedroom in North Beach for his little problem.
That's a wonderful way to get a tax break: design your home so that no one else could possibly want to buy it. That's why I'm going with a geodesic dome for my next house.
Yeah, that Larry Ellison is a jerk. Who knew?
Fascinating strategy. So, can we think of property taxes as basically being a Usefulness Penalty?
So wait... was Larry was forced to build that house?
No one will have sympathy for Larry, me included, but it does make some sense to give incentives to people who foolishly pump 200 million into the local economy.