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Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

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Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#21

Post by bregma »

kogus wrote: post #5
mikece wrote: post #4

I wonder how much of these "subsidies" are actually tax abatements as opposed to a handout? I am familiar with the Kansas City area: the chart shows Amazon getting $20M for their distribution center in WYCO/KCK whereas they only got $1.8M for their distribution center in Edgerton. Property taxes alone could explain such a massive difference (WYCO property tax rates are ridiculous) and the distribution center is in a…

Virtually every item on the list is categorized as a "tax abatement", "tax deferral", or "tax exemption". I think it's misleading to call those 'subsidies'. As always, the existence of such taxes gives politicians a tool to amplify their corruption and incompetence. The right answer is to take such tools out of politician's hands by ending the taxes in the first place. It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's muc…

I'm all in favour of eliminating taxes on corporate revenue. Income taxes should be paid by those earning income (the dividend recipients, the capitalists making gains). Progressive taxes on executive compensation is a good idea for keeping those ridiculously excessive C-level benefits lower.

Property taxes, on the other hand, should be paid by the landowner and recipient of municipal services. If Amazon wants to build a warehouse on its land and expects services like water and sewer, police and fire coverage, roads, snow and rain clearance, and many other things that property taxes pay for, they need to pay property taxes.

Any property tax abatement or exemption is just taxing the local residents to help pay the exorbitant salaries of the people who go from junket to junket scooping up these delicious subsidies. I do not think it is really in the best interest of regular local citizens and for that reason it should be regulated.

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#22

Post by cheph »

So the racket in US, as far as I can tell, is basically this: Bezos and friends (e.g Bill Gates) push for higher taxes and other policies that are supposed to balance the power between business and "the people", this results in more taxes for businesses who would be their competitors, but Bezos and friends get waivers and don't have to pay the taxes or comply with policies.

I think US should pass a specific bill to tax Bezos and friends, take at least 90% of their net worth, and then start taxing "the rich". Anything else is just bullshit.

I mean, taxing the rich has nothing to do with deficit anyway, there are not enough rich people in the world to even make a dent in the massive hole US dug for themselves with their "money printer goes brrrr" clown act.

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#23

Post by snarf21 »

dionidium wrote: post #3

We do this kind of weird dance in which we create subsidies to incentivize desirable behavior and then when it works and we get more of the desirable behavior we complain about the handouts. I understand that democracy implies multiple constituencies, not all of which agree on the need for any particular policy (and so arguments about the necessity of specific subsidies are reasonable and inevitable), but it's always…

Agreed. You get what you incentive for. You get what you optimize for. Jobs and housing will always be incentivized. because they are needed everywhere. It is always why corporate taxes are setup to be paid after expenses and personal taxes are setup to be paid before expenses (generally).

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#24

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

kogus wrote: post #5
mikece wrote: post #4

I wonder how much of these "subsidies" are actually tax abatements as opposed to a handout? I am familiar with the Kansas City area: the chart shows Amazon getting $20M for their distribution center in WYCO/KCK whereas they only got $1.8M for their distribution center in Edgerton. Property taxes alone could explain such a massive difference (WYCO property tax rates are ridiculous) and the distribution center is in a…

Virtually every item on the list is categorized as a "tax abatement", "tax deferral", or "tax exemption". I think it's misleading to call those 'subsidies'. As always, the existence of such taxes gives politicians a tool to amplify their corruption and incompetence. The right answer is to take such tools out of politician's hands by ending the taxes in the first place. It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's muc…

> It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's much more practical, efficient, and transparent to keep taxes at the personal and consumer level.

Yes, lets continue to turn all responsibility into externalities for our corporate overlords.

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#25

Post by proxyon »

Loughla wrote: post #7
kogus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually every item on the list is categorized as a "tax abatement", "tax deferral", or "tax exemption". I think it's misleading to call those 'subsidies'. As always, the existence of such taxes gives politicians a tool to amplify their corruption and incompetence. The right answer is to take such tools out of politician's hands by ending the taxes in the first place. It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's muc…

>It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's much more practical, efficient, and transparent to keep taxes at the personal and consumer level. That is a very, very bold claim. Please provide bold evidence or reasoning. >The right answer is to take such tools out of politician's hands by ending the taxes in the first place. So there is a corrupt system, and the only solution is to just destroy it? I don't get it.

> That is a very, very bold claim. Please provide bold evidence or reasoning.

No it's not. This is common knowledge in the economics world. Corporations can dodge taxes in ways individuals mostly can't.

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#26

Post by tasty_freeze »

kogus wrote: post #5
mikece wrote: post #4

I wonder how much of these "subsidies" are actually tax abatements as opposed to a handout? I am familiar with the Kansas City area: the chart shows Amazon getting $20M for their distribution center in WYCO/KCK whereas they only got $1.8M for their distribution center in Edgerton. Property taxes alone could explain such a massive difference (WYCO property tax rates are ridiculous) and the distribution center is in a…

Virtually every item on the list is categorized as a "tax abatement", "tax deferral", or "tax exemption". I think it's misleading to call those 'subsidies'. As always, the existence of such taxes gives politicians a tool to amplify their corruption and incompetence. The right answer is to take such tools out of politician's hands by ending the taxes in the first place. It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's muc…

I'm not an economist, but not taxing corporations leads to increasing income inequality, and gives companies the wrong economic signals.

It costs money to run the government -- the court system, the armed forces, the legislatures, the police and fire departments, etc. Companies consume these resources and that cost should be factored into the cost of their products. In fact, it seems pretty obvious to me that especially large corporations use these resources far more than individuals. When was the last time you were able to lobby congress to write laws to your liking, or create trade agreements, or author a bill to advantage your financial interests?

Back in the 50s in the US, companies paid about 30-35% of total tax revenue and the gears of industry still turned fine. Now it is about 7%, and people complain that it is too much and is harming the economy and stifling progress.

If companies were taxed at a higher rate, yes, it would change things. There would be winners and losers, but a new equilibrium would be established soon enough. Dividends would be lower -- yes, so what? The economy is already too geared towards rewarding unproductive stock market games and the lopsided part of that goes to the people who are already well off. Dropping taxes to zero for companies would make things worse. Rich people wouldn't consume more and would just reinvest their increased dividends, while working people would have to make up the loss of tax revenues either through increased personal tax or loss of services.

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#27

Post by ashtonbaker »

dionidium wrote: post #3

We do this kind of weird dance in which we create subsidies to incentivize desirable behavior and then when it works and we get more of the desirable behavior we complain about the handouts. I understand that democracy implies multiple constituencies, not all of which agree on the need for any particular policy (and so arguments about the necessity of specific subsidies are reasonable and inevitable), but it's always…

It's a race to the bottom, though. The entire premise of subsidizing e.g. an Amazon datacenter is that Amazon needs a datacenter, and it's going to be built somewhere, so you need to offer them a lot of money if you want the jobs in your state/city. It's not a question of if the "desirable behavior" of opening a datacenter and "creating a lot of jobs" is going to happen or not, just a question of where. So there's this whole competition between locations to offer the greatest possible tax break, but it doesn't actually have any bearing on Amazon's overall desirable behavior. We're just giving them tax breaks for doing their normal business.

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#28

Post by proxyon »

ceejayoz wrote: post #15
jdasdf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Eliminating or severely reducing corporate taxation is a fairly mainstream idea in economics]( https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CorporateTaxation.html )

That's the website of a conservative think-tank.

Workers at conservative think-tanks breathe oxygen. Ergo, breathing oxygen is wrong.

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#29

Post by fastball »

mikece wrote: post #4

I wonder how much of these "subsidies" are actually tax abatements as opposed to a handout? I am familiar with the Kansas City area: the chart shows Amazon getting $20M for their distribution center in WYCO/KCK whereas they only got $1.8M for their distribution center in Edgerton. Property taxes alone could explain such a massive difference (WYCO property tax rates are ridiculous) and the distribution center is in a…

I always thought having a federation of states was a great idea because you encourage competition between them which hypothetically means better outcomes.

But this example makes me feel like maybe that's not always the case. Is this a failure of federated states / competition?

Re: Subsidies Awarded to Amazon: at least $4.04B and Counting

#30

Post by parhamn »

Why do people act like governments are some benevolent entity that corporations must do favors for?

It's like any other market. You create jobs, tax revenues and opportunities and different governments create incentives to lure them in. If anything the complaints should be levied at the governments who citizens think are doing a bad P/L analysis on these subsidies. Alas, only Amazon in mentioned in this title.

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