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Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

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Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#61
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the state and local level, that just means companies will leave your state and go somewhere else. In a globalized world, the same thing is true for countries. There is a reason France has an effective 11% corporate tax rate: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the... (Chart 2). If you want to pay for the safety net, do what Europe does and tax middle class people who can't just move to a lower…

The fundamental problem is that capital is permitted to cross borders, but people are not. Not in the same way. So, corporations can vote with their feet, but people cannot.

The U.S. and the Schengen Area each comprise regions of 300-400 million people where people are free to move internally. You would think that would create a similar pressure to reduce internal income taxes to attract residents, but it does not. People, unlike corporations, have roots in places and by and large don't want to move to chase lower tax rates.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though usually not enough to make up the difference in incentives. If we take the Amazon NY incentives at face value, each employee needs to pay $25k in taxes to make up the difference just on the initial tax break alone. That doesn’t count extra expenditures for expanded public transportation or nearby development. That’s also if amazon hires the proposed 40k new employees on day one, which they won’t. There’s a goo…

Which given FANG salaries they will do. And the state and NYC preying in aid the problems with its tube system is deeply cynical, maybe try to be 1 less corrupt and competent

$25k in state and local taxes would be high even for FANG in NYC

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#63
post #57

Do any of these large companies build campuses in other countries?

Google's London office hosts 4000 employees and has cost 1 billion (800m million was the plot). It might not look like a campus, that's because central London simply doesn't have the space. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/1/15723642/google-london-off...

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#64
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem is that capital is permitted to cross borders, but people are not. Not in the same way. So, corporations can vote with their feet, but people cannot.

The U.S. and the Schengen Area each comprise regions of 300-400 million people where people are free to move internally. You would think that would create a similar pressure to reduce internal income taxes to attract residents, but it does not. People, unlike corporations, have roots in places and by and large don't want to move to chase lower tax rates.

Corporations don’t have to physically move when they move. They just file paperwork elsewhere.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. and the Schengen Area each comprise regions of 300-400 million people where people are free to move internally. You would think that would create a similar pressure to reduce internal income taxes to attract residents, but it does not. People, unlike corporations, have roots in places and by and large don't want to move to chase lower tax rates.

Corporations don’t have to physically move when they move. They just file paperwork elsewhere.

That's not really true. You can't just decide to be an Irish company if you have no presence in Ireland. The wave of corporate inversions in the U.S. was accompanied by lots of companies moving their headquarters (and their top executives) to Switzerland, the U.K., etc.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#67
post #66

Their campus location is so far north, it's more like south Dallas than Austin.

Um, what are you talking about? It is near Jollyville which is at the North Austin city limits. Get on 35 and wait in traffic in Temple and you'll figure out how far Dallas is away.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#68
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously do not understand anyone in the Bay Area that’s anti development. How can you justify yourself in good conscience to be anti development when CoL is so high?

People who have vested interests in keeping it that way: NIMBYers. People who currently own homes and want to see their habitable “retirement plans” grow indefinitely. And god forbid we build apartment complexes greater than 5 stories all over the Bay Area. We wouldn’t want anyone’s glorious viewshed of the surrounding yellow hills to be blocked. Of course, increasing housing density highlights other problems: terrib…

>Of course, increasing housing density highlights other problems: terrible traffic and poor public transportation

But that in itself is a zoning problem. Mixed development that allows the places people want to go to be integrated where people live drastically reduce transportation trips.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#69
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you're saying, but, to paraphrase the article, giving a billion dollar company an 8.6 million tax break when you're shutting down social programmes can be a tough pill to swallow. On a parallel note, I'd like to underline just how good the tech giant has it. Since it can move anywhere, you have to give it excessive gifts for him to come to you. So the giant gets those rewards, simply because he's a giant.

Tech giants can't go just anywhere. They need to locate their offices in cities which have large, highly educated, tech savvy workforces (or at least the infrastructure to relocate, satisfy and sustain those workforces). This acts as a check on just how much of a tax break a municipality is able to give them, as public funds are needed to support that infrastructure. Austin, Seattle and Culver City seem to be strikin…

>This acts as a check on just how much of a tax break a municipality is able to give them, as public funds are needed to support that infrastructure.

Well I suppose its Apple, so when they do cronyism, it must be okay. /s

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#70
post #8

Big corps love to brag about "adding jobs", but don't like to brag about the "tax incentives" they are getting. There are usually huge costs for the whole community. Austin tax incentives for Apple seem to be relatively small [1], but Foxconn factory in Wisconsin is an extreme case. I highly recommend the Replay All podcast episode on this [2][3] [1] https://www.statesman.com/news/20120901/austin-council-oks-8... [2]…

There should be an MFN like law to these incentives. Any incentives given to a company should be given to every company. The government should not be picking and choosing.

From that perspective, one way of looking at these tax breaks is as a rebate of government time & money saved by dealing with a single entity (vs 10 or 50 for the same sized economic impact).
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