Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

fox5ny.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 359 posts

Re: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

#181

Post by chiefalchemist »

kodablah wrote: post #170
chiefalchemist wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The freedom for a community..." If this was a community decision why is there pushback in LIC? Because, it wasn't a community decision. It was the gov using taxpayer money to subsidize one of the largest most successful companies in the world. Fact: The Gov created the housing bubble. Fact: The Gov created the student loan bubble. Fact: The abatements in __your__ community came out of someone else's pocket. That m…

Ignoring the other facts as guff, this is a common misunderstanding: > The abatements in __your__ community came out of someone else's pocket. That money had to come from somewhere. Abatements are not gifts, they are reductions. The money that was not taken did not have to come from anywhere. The reductions did not amount to a negative total (not even close in my case), and therefore the abatements essentially amount…

> "Abatements are not gifts, they are reductions."

Yes. But you make it sounds like the gov services being provided was also reduced. Is that the case? If not, then that means the services being provided still have to be paid for. So if it's not your community, then where do you think that money is coming from?

Re: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

#182

Post by specialist »

tylerhou wrote: post #133
jondubois wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 1) Incentives are not given up front. They are given proportional to the results Amazon has achieved. Amazon must make a report each year detailing their progress before any award is given. What is progress? How do you measure progress? Many politicians claim that the past decade was progress. I don't see it. >> 2) The city-level incentives are available to any business. State-level incentives (I think 300m) are n…

> How do you measure progress? For the past decade, we've severely deteriorated as a society - Yet politicians will call it progress. Citation? By most metrics we've improved as a society in the last 10 years.

Not all of us see wage stagnation, growing inequity, debt accumulation as an improvement.

Re: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

#183

Post by boomka »

longerthoughts wrote: post #147
boomka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know who you are referring to as NYC, but citizens of USA as a whole are worse off. Pitting one USA municipality against another to extract subsidy for what Amazon would do anyways is just another mechanism for wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

> just another mechanism for wealth transfer from the poor to the rich I'm not sure this type of competition is a great thing for citizens, but is this really a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich? Doesn't most tax revenue in the US come from the rich, meaning they're covering most of the bill? In that case it would be more like wealth transfer from rich people to rich companies with some of that wealth making…

> but is this really a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich? Doesn't most tax revenue in the US come from the rich, meaning they're covering most of the bill?

Doesn't matter where tax money came from, that part we are not changing. What changes is where that money goes. It could pay for schools, Medicaid, homeless shelters. Now there is going to be less of that, as we are building a helipad for Bezos with some of that money instead.

Which is why it's a wealth transfer towards the rich.

Re: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

#184

Post by jopsen »

chrisseaton wrote: post #135
boomka wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that would be true in any other location. One could argue other locations actually need such infrastructure more. Amazon was not hiding the fact that they would build HQ2 anyways, and in USA. There was absolutely no need to donate them taxpayer money for it. And if you do, then taxpayer should own the infrastructure, with Amazon paying for use.

No I mean that the competition may have motivated cities to create better offers of infrastructure to compete. If they all sat back and said 'well Amazon will have to go somewhere we won't bother making any effort' that may not have happened, and Amazon would be less efficient and the whole country would earn less. For example some cities were proposing building things like extra train stations, which benefit everyon…

There is a difference between building public infrastructure and giving tax-exemptions..

Public infrastructure is available to all.. why can't the public finance it without Amazon?

Re: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

#186

Post by jopsen »

walshemj wrote: post #120
boomka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know who you are referring to as NYC, but citizens of USA as a whole are worse off. Pitting one USA municipality against another to extract subsidy for what Amazon would do anyways is just another mechanism for wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

The same argument could be made for the USA by individual states having different income and sales taxes. That's just as bad as Irelands tricks helping to avoid taxes due in the UK and other eu states

Well, it's hard to know the details.. But in the EU these kinds of incentives are generally illegal. As they are anti-competitive.

Which is also why we see the EU go after Ireland and require that they collect taxes from Amazon :) I recall Vestager starting to get the ball rolling a few years ago.

Re: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

#188

Post by qaq »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #104
qaq wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a cost though it's tax break over 10 years and there would be no tax revenue if NYC didn't get the office in the first place.

This is true, nobody in NYC pays taxes currently and nobody there has a job already.

At present there is N tax revenue With HQ2 there will be N+Y a portion of Y will be returned back to Amazon how is this exactly a cost for the city?

Re: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

#189

Post by CPLX »

asah wrote: post #127
CPLX wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ. New York City doesn't have a problem attracting jobs. Like not even a little bit. The idea that this is actually incremental revenue for the city is extremely debatable. New York City is a really big place. Midtown is the largest central business district in the country, and Lower Manhattan is the third largest, after Chicago. There are 1,700,000 jobs in Manhattan alone and 3,900,000 in New York City…

My god, you're bitter for a startup founder! As a veteran founder myself, I'd be excited: this brings talent to fuel my startup, this brings interactive infrastructure, etc. Amazon and Google are not regular employers: your startup pays outlets in taxes and mooches off infrastructure. The big companies find that with real profits. Finally, $48k/employee is peanuts to a big city startup, and typically that kind of mon…

We're literally giving New York tax money to the richest man in the world, who lives somewhere else, instead of spending it on the subway, or parks, or schools, or literally anything. If you're not outraged you're not paying attention.

As it happens I don't have a Silicon Valley venture backed profitless startup, I have a company that gets paid money to do work and makes a healthy profit. I've paid very considerable taxes in NYC for 20 years.

Now, literally, they are handing them to Jeff Bezos in exchange for nothing. That area of LIC would just be something else instead. We don't need these guys to bring "talent" this is literally New York City, a giant magnet that has drawn the most talented people on the planet for at least a hundred years.

Cuomo is an obvious crook and has been since conception, and this deal sucks. I see no reason not to point that out.

Re: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

#190

Post by BonesJustice »

segmondy wrote: post #167
rb808 wrote: post #7

This is such a great deal for NYC As the article says, they give up $1.5B over 10 years, but then get "Projected incremental tax revenue of more than $10 billion over 20 years." I dont know where that comes from but the payroll and property taxes paid by 25k employees dwarves the incentives. The most important part is it cements NYC as the main tech center on the East Coast. That is invaluable. EDIT: I wonder if NYC…

Yes, if you get 25k fresh new employees into NY. Chances are a good amount of these employees are already living in NY and paying payroll and property taxes.

Also, I hope those averages are skewed downward by non-engineering jobs, because if Amazon thinks they’re going to be able to hire their usual caliber of engineer for $150k/year in NYC, they’re in for a nasty surprise.

Apart from having to compete with NYC’s already bustling tech presence, they’ll be competing to hire the same engineers that investment banks, hedge funds, and HFT groups are after. The comp packages in fintech are impressive, and generally all cash (as opposed to a mix of cash and stock).

Post reply on HN