A. SUMMARY This dataset contains sales tax collected in San Francisco for calendar years 2018 through 2023 (CY 2018 to 2023). Sales tax is aggregated, or summed, at the census block level. However, some census blocks have been combined to maintain the anonymity of businesses based on Taxation Code Section 7056. See “How to use this dataset” below for more details on how the data has been aggregated. Sales tax is collected by businesses on many types of transactions and regulated by the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration.

B. HOW THE DATASET IS CREATED Data is collected by HDL. The data is then aggregated based on the criteria outlined in the "How to use this dataset" section.

C. UPDATE PROCESS This dataset will be updated annually.

D. HOW TO USE THIS DATASET This dataset can be used to analyze sales tax data over time across census blocks in San Francisco. Due to data privacy protection regulations for businesses, sales tax data is not available for all census blocks. Census blocks where there are less than 4 businesses paying sales tax or a single business that pays 80% or more of the total sales tax have been combined with neighboring Census Blocks to protect the confidentiality of affected businesses. Because of this aggregation, some Census Block groups in this dataset may change in future years as the number of businesses in a particular Census Block changes. The historical data changes based on audit findings and amended returns. If census block groupings change, it will happen when the dataset is updated - on an annual basis. These new blocks will be backfilled to previous years.

Additionally, business payers with multiple locations (for example chain stores) are excluded because sales tax cannot be tied back to the ___location where it was collected.

Finally, census blocks in the area field are from 2010 (GEOID10) and not from 2020.

A map of this dataset can be viewed here.