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

fox5ny.com

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

#301

Post by smsm42 »

grecy wrote: post #296
vdnkh wrote: post #32

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. 2) The city-level incentives are available to any business. State-level incentives (I think 300m) are not. 3) Amazon has pledged to invest in the local community as part of the deal. There are plans for an elementary school and te…

> Please tell me what about this is bad. A trillion dollar company is getting subsidies, when they should be helping to build and grow the society that created them. Healthcare in America is disgraceful. Absolutely the worst in the developed world. Tens of millions of people in your country live on food stamps. Tens of millions work multiple jobs and are still considered "in poverty". Higher education is so expensive…

Most of your screed about how US sucks has nothing to do with Amazon or why Amazon deal is bad.

> When a trillion dollar company gets to pay less that they're supposed to, it makes society worse, not better.

That's where you went wrong. A trillion dollar company is not supposed to pay anything to New York. The minimum NY was getting is $0. That's the starting point. Amazon is free to locate HQ in any other place and NY gets $0 from it. Now, NY can negotiate and get more than $0 - or not, and get $0. It's not like Amazon has already build headquarters and paid taxes and then NY decided to give them back a lot of money just out of the blue. It's like Amazon said "I can bring this much money to the table, but what you can do for us so that we choose you? Lower taxes? Better regulations? Something else?" and NYC considered how much Amazon brings to the table and how much they can do to make NYC their choice and they negotiated.

Now you may want to say "if lower taxes makes the city or state competitive and improves outcomes, how comes not everybody gets low taxes?" Good question. Probably the same reason not everybody gets paid six-figure salaries. Some companies (or people) have more economic clout than others and can demand better compensation in exchange for good their bring to the table. If the city (or employer) doesn't want the goods, they are free to refuse the deal.

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

#302

Post by smsm42 »

gorbachev wrote: post #229
vdnkh wrote: post #32

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. 2) The city-level incentives are available to any business. State-level incentives (I think 300m) are not. 3) Amazon has pledged to invest in the local community as part of the deal. There are plans for an elementary school and te…

"Please tell me what about this is bad." A trillion dollar company does not need subsidies.

They also don't need to locate headquarters in New York. It's a question of negotiated agreement, not need.

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

#303

Post by brownbat »

linkmotif wrote: post #293
brownbat wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? Amazon is a great company in a lot of ways, not great in some other ways, and none of that has anything to do with my opinions on local governance. Or as Yogi Berra might have put it, this Amazon story isn't really about Amazon anyway.

Because the reason you buy things on Amazon is because they get you the best deal and they get you the best deal because they get the best deals. They get the best deal by exploiting workers in American warehouses, exploiting workers in Chinese factories or exploiting the citizens of New York. Either way, exploitation gets you that deal. Those guys who aren’t as effective at exploitation as Amazon? Well, you don’t sh…

My issue is not with Amazon.

This is about the game, not the player.

Though now I'm misquoting Ice T too...

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

#304

Post by smsm42 »

cryptica wrote: post #163
tylerhou wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>> Citation? Donald Trump, Brexit, Facebook, opioids epidemic, cryptocurrencies, increased rents, soul-crushing corporate jobs for all.

There's no pleasing some people. High unemployment? Terrible. Low unemployment? Oh, it's soul-crushing corporate jobs, it's even worse!

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

#305

Post by _pmf_ »

hnmonkey wrote: post #235
kodablah wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does if you want their business. You made a statement, you didn't say why it was bad.

You know, I was going to respond to you by saying that there will always be Amazon business without a new HQ in a place. However, I thought about it and it is certainly possible that they would test new and interesting things in markets around their HQs, potentially providing unforeseen benefits for the residents around them and markets around them. While the whole package deal still seems like a net negative and sha…

Queens becoming a playground for social experiments of a billionaire is guaranteed to be good, right?

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

#306

Post by oculusthrift »

jdoliner wrote: post #213

The article is very disingenuous about this being a "cost" to tax payers. It's a tax break, it's not extra money that's going to be added to NY's tax bill, it's taxes that Amazon theoretically would have had to pay if they decided to build their offices there and didn't have the tax break. There are some other real costs to tax payers in the form of subsidies, but they're much smaller than the 1.5 billion figure quot…

in economics it’s considered the same thing. either way it adds to less net income for then govt.

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

#307

Post by heimatau »

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…

Hmmm. This strikes me as a way to move slaves. If Amazon has their workers get taxed by NYC, Amazon gets to save money. Kind of nasty when it's thought of this way. :/

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

#308

Post by oculusthrift »

candybar wrote: post #284

I think people are, if anything, underestimating how good this is for the tech scene in NYC and for New York in general, at least from a fiscal perspective. LIC is increasingly well-developed but mostly as a residential area. It's not Manhattan and doesn't really have top-tier employers. The tech scene in NYC is almost entirely concentrated in Manhattan, with the exception of maybe a tiny tech scene in parts of Brook…

so now our govt is paying amazon to create jobs from h1bs and displace natives?

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

#309

Post by tantuyu »

Let us hope that the residents of the Queensbridge Houses housing projects get some employment opportunity out of their new neighbor AMAZON HQ2.... As one of the residents put it in the NYT:

“Not everyone here has a Ph.D., but anyone eager to work should be able to get job,” he said. “It can’t be nothing but a plus.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/nyregion/amazon-queens-qu...

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

#310

Post by dmitriy_ko »

rayiner wrote: post #264
cycrutchfield wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, NIMBYs haven't been kind to Seattle or SF. You are attributing the unkindness to the symptom, not the problem.

The proof of this is what happened elsewhere. the Dallas and Houston metro areas grew more in each of the last two decades the Bay Area has grown total since 1980. But prices haven’t skyrocketed because development has been permitted.

Why Amazon didn't choose Dallas or Houston?
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