A day after receiving a note from Apple touting its investments in Cupertino, city officials abandoned plans to ask voters in November to tax the iPhone maker and other large businesses in its city based on the number of employees.

The proposed employer tax measure could have raised up to $10.2 million for Cupertino. It would have hit Apple — the city’s largest employer — the hardest. In 2020, Apple was expected to pay $9.4 million based on projections of 24,000 employees in Cupertino, according to city staff.

But the business community pushed back against the tax proposal, urging the city to follow its city staff’s recommendation to do more outreach and formulate a plan for how the money would be spent. The proposed measure would have funneled the money into the city’s general fund, and council members said they planned to use it for transportation improvements. But Rick Kitson with the Cupertino Chamber of Commerce said there needed to be more accountability for that money, with specific projects named on where the funding would go.

“There is no legally binding connection,” said Kitson, who handed out stickers that said “Not Now” to people attending Tuesday’s council meeting.

Several Cupertino officials said the city should engage with Apple and other businesses to come up with a solution, with some indicating that they may be open to revisiting a potential employer tax based on headcount at a later date.

“Apple did step up to the plate and sent a letter and expressed that (it is) willing to cooperate and work with the city and the business community here,” said Barry Chang, a Cupertino council member who had pushed for an employer tax when he was mayor in 2016.

The proposed measure would have charged businesses a flat fee and an additional fee per employee for businesses with at least 100 staffers. Apple could have paid for 92 percent of the nearly $10.2 million raised through the tax in one model that was under consideration.

At a Tuesday night city council meeting in Cupertino, Apple executive Mike Foulkes said his company was willing to work with the city on transportation solutions and could meet next week.

“We want to work to reduce congestion on our roads and get people out of their cars,” said Foulkes, Apple’s director of state and local governmental affairs.

On Monday, Apple Vice President Kristina Raspe sent a note to City Council members touting Apple’s investments in the community, including funding sidewalk and crosswalk improvements as well as building a visitor center near its new headquarters after residents said they wanted one.

“When deciding where to build our new headquarters, we had many options, but worked hard to secure enough land to build in Cupertino,” Raspe wrote.

Cupertino’s proposed employer tax was modeled after a similar effort in Mountain View that will go before voters in November. Under that model, Google could be charged $3.3 million. Other cities have shied away from such headcount taxes. Seattle’s council reversed an earlier decision to tax large businesses in its city based on headcount after receiving opposition from Amazon.

But some community members said that if Cupertino were to tax Apple too much, it could cause the iPhone maker to add or move jobs elsewhere. Others said they believe Apple has helped the community.

“I just can’t see killing the goose that lays the golden egg,” said Cupertino resident Donna Austin.

Wendy Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thewendylee