The only problem here is that the U.S has completely different tax laws for each state. If everyone wasn't so fanatical about state's rights it would be far more difficult for companies to jump ship in order to evade tax, and far less administrative burden caused by tax compliance issues.
San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
71–80 of 108 posts
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#72«The company will be forced to move to a new location in order to get a six year payroll tax break». No. The company is forced to pay tax, just like everybody else. Tax must be payed to keep community-owned stuff rolling, functioning and improving. If a company jumps trough hoops to avoid that, they are putting efford in being selfish, scrooges. And should probably be banned from your community in the first place, since they only leech and don't contribute back. It might be, that growing up in western Europe has made me a bit too soft, but I think this article illustrates perfectly why so many people despise "big companies", rather then embrace and love them for doing their good work for their great country.
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#73I appreciate it when people pay taxes because I like public transportation, fire safety, paved roads, bridges, public schools, police officers, health inspectors, safety inspectors, public parks, libraries, clean air, (relatively) fair corporations, airports, hospitals, court systems, electricity, vehicle regulation, elections, veteran associations, child support, public television... San Francisco is a pretty nice p…
public transportation? I live in Vancouver and recently flew in to SFO. Being from Vancouver I thought I know I'll save time and money and just take the subway in. BART is fucking disgusting and I couldn't sit down on the train for fear of picking up god knows what. In Vancouver if you start a startup and hire someone under 30 with a degree the gov't will pay you the first $15/hour of their salary, the rest you can a…
I ride on Bart and sit down almost everyday no problem. Though from my limited sampling of Canadians you guys do seem to have a germophobe penchant.
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#74I appreciate it when people pay taxes because I like public transportation, fire safety, paved roads, bridges, public schools, police officers, health inspectors, safety inspectors, public parks, libraries, clean air, (relatively) fair corporations, airports, hospitals, court systems, electricity, vehicle regulation, elections, veteran associations, child support, public television... San Francisco is a pretty nice p…
> I appreciate it when people pay taxes because I like public transportation, fire safety, paved roads, bridges, public schools, police officers, health inspectors, safety inspectors, public parks, libraries, clean air, (relatively) fair corporations, airports, hospitals, court systems, electricity, vehicle regulation, elections, veteran associations, child support, public television...
I'll be sure to remember that every time the government raises taxes and pay up without asking any questions or being critical.
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#75Twitter should move to Oakland :-)
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't aware of the wars or bailouts the city of San Francisco has run. Could you elaborate?
Nice straw man. The originating subject was on taxes (since it takes more than a city to provide all of those services), not only SF taxes :-) San Francisco residents live in the United States of America. The United States of America imposes federal taxes. Federal taxes have been used to fund wars and bailouts of various failed businesses. Of course, no real city has the authority to have a military. The city does ha…
>Of course, no real city has the authority to have a military.
To be fair, Singapore does have a Ministry of Defence and an Army.
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think his point was that if that subsidy exists for hiring people <30, once that subsidy stops applying, you'd expect companies to be less willing to hire you. The idea being that they could hire someone with basically the same experience and also get the subsidy.
Hopefully you have more experience when you are older.
There's a discontinuity in desirability at 30, though.
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, OK, now I understand a problem I can agree with - so it's not so much the damage from paying 1.5% on a profitable transaction (employees exercise options as part of winning start-up lottery) but rather the company has to pay cash for a gain it only realised in paper. So now I understand why they were saying a company going for IPO would have to pay most of the money raised as taxes, rather than just 1.5% of it. W…
I'm not sure I follow your post; apologies if it's my own up-too-late-itis. "When cash exchanges hands" is when the tax does apply, assuming by that you mean options being exercised. That's why in my imaginary example a post or two ago, one of the more fantastical & unlikely parts of it was a full 30% option pool all being exercised at once. Hence, (and I apologize for any inaccuracies in paraphrase) the post you are…
My understanding was the same as yours above, but it seems that if there is a valuation event – an IPO, for example – then the rise in value of all shares is counted, not just the ones which were sold.
Separately, I do not think the tax is unfair. Tax has to come from somewhere, and if SF can show a nicer environment for employees and founders to live in, then they can charge a higher price for the environment. Tax competition takes care of testing whether this is a wise decision, and there is plenty of tax competition in the region surrounding SF.
To me, tax becomes unfair if it is arbitrarily applied to some people, but not to others, e.g. letting Twitter and Zynga off, while taxing other start-ups.
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#79I'm probably a "fecking eejit," but what exactly is so stupid and ridiculous about the quote "Who are the [Twitter] investors? Probably some of the wealthiest people in this country. And we are giving them more wealth."? I mean, would the tax really hurt Twitter or Zynga? This stuff is just kind of disheartening. Oh no, your multi-billion dollar massive success of a company might lose a couple mil to taxes, better th…
Maybe i am too, but I can't figure out how SF is "giving" [the companies] wealth? Said companies are earning their own wealth. SF is not "giving" it to them, I'm sure. Let's say you were going to lease storage (physical) and outfit A had a flat fee of 50/mo. Outfit B had a flat fee of 70/mo plus appreciation on the goods you stored. Let's say 20/mo difference had negligible impact on your disposable income. Who would…
If only businesses were as simple to manage as leasing physical storage space.
It's not just City versus Company. Your employees are a factor in this, and employee decisions are based on lots of different variables.
Employees are the most perishable resource a company has. If my company told me they were moving my downtown Chicago office to the suburbs, I would start looking for a new job. I'd wager that half to 2/3rds of my office would not like an office move either, primarily because of the increase in commuting time and cost. (Hell, I would have to buy a car!)
Twitter and Zygna have an enormous investment in the talent of their employees. Many of them are likely to prefer working in SF rather than Brisbane. So they may play hardball with the City, but I'll bet they ultimately do what their employees want them to do.
Re: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away
#80You know what ?
Sometimes it can't be about the money, sometimes it's about what you can do for the community and the city you choose to have a business in, and the quality of living there. Why do most startups are located there and in cities nearby ?
I'm pretty sure Twitter wouldn't be twitter if they weren't in SF.
And this is what's scares me about this whole "bubble 2.0" thing. People (investors) are getting too greedy, they rather move an entire company, including reallocation of it's employees than to pay a fraction of their $xxB evaluation.
I don't give a damn about the investors, they knew where this companies was located. If they aren't informed before their investment, this just shows how much they know about their own country and cities.
Besides, you have no idea how much tax europeans startups have to pay, If there was a place like SF in Europe, I would be moving there tomorrow morning.
And finally, we are talking about Twitter. Have they finally got a way of making any real money ? Or this company based only on paper money ?