San Francisco Feels a Tax-Base Chill With First Drop in 25 Years

For the first time in more than 25 years, San Francisco is forecasting that its property tax base will fall -- a decline that reflects the tough straits of the city that is among the hardest hit by the pandemic downturn.

That tax base, the real estate values the city uses to calculate taxes, rarely drops even in the worst of times, thanks to a quirk in California law dating back to 1978. Not even the dot-com bust or the 2008 financial crisis was capable of nudging it lower.

But the virus that drove out residents and kept tourists away ...