If one San Francisco politician gets her way, even robots will have to pay taxes

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If a worker loses a job to a robot, who pays the city and state tax revenue that the formerly employed worker paid in? Right now, nobody does.
That's where the idea of a "robot tax" comes in.

In an interview with Quartz earlier this year, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates said he believes governments should tax companies' use of robots. It's an idea one San Francisco politician is now trying to advance to the next level.

"I think automation is a good thing," San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Jane Kim told CNBC's "On the Money" in an interview, "but there will be a downside to this technological progress and workers will be left behind."

To try to combat that, Kim has created a committee called the "Jobs of the Future Fund."

"We're exploring continuing the payroll tax and extending it to robots that perform jobs humans currently do," Kim explains. Companies would pay into a fund, the same payroll tax and social security the replaced worker was due.

Kim told CNBC that the goal "is to help smooth this transition, help workers that are displaced by their jobs re-educate and retrain."

She added that the money could be used to train workers for future jobs, provide free community college, and "invest in creating meaningful and high wage jobs in industries that are currently hard to automate like child care workers, which is currently a poverty profession."

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