An SF Housing Nonprofit Blew Almost $500K on a Flawed Effort to Tax Amazon

> In true San Francisco fashion, Prop. K might have been crafted with noble intentions, but it has since blown up in the face of its backers. It was intended to tax Amazon and perhaps some other large e-commerce companies. But because the authors apparently misunderstood both Amazon’s business and the nature of many local enterprises, Prop. K would instead ding hundreds of bars, restaurants and small brick-and-mortar retailers while draining millions from the general fund.

> “I never imagined that their cloud services or Prime video are more revenue than all the stuff I buy from them,” Elberling said. “I never imagined that to be true.”

How does one spend $360k to design a tax with a single focus to tax a single organization, and not even bother to look at the most basic income statement of said organization?