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by exitcode00 2712 days ago
It's all semantics - I don't understand why people want to defend a multi-billion dollar corporation, but, lets say, that NYC didn't write off 5 billion to Amazon. Could the city have budgeted more for the failing subway and nasty harbor given that they received more in taxes? Maybe.. if they really cared for the city.

All these corporations do with their profits and tax-incentives is hoard them overseas and spend them on stock buy-backs.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/2018-record-stock-buybacks-...
2 comments
autokad 2712 days ago
> "lets say, that NYC didn't write off 5 billion to Amazon. Could the city have budgeted more for the failing subway and nasty harbor given that they received more in taxes? Maybe"

You do realize NYC is not collecting less taxes because Amazon came? If Amazon goes to another city, they collect 0. if Amazon gets a tax break, they collect 0. now you could argue that Amazon provides some sort of extra burden on city resources, though they would also collect more taxes from the employees and other services rendered.

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atq2119 2712 days ago
The problem with that logic is that you're predetermining your conclusion by picking the baseline that you're comparing against.

You pick your preferred baseline, fair enough. But since we're talking about a discriminatory tax break here, it's perfectly reasonable to choose as baseline a world without discrimination. And in that comparison, NY de facto pays the 5 billion or whatever it is. Of course, this is also choosing an ultimately arbitrary baseline for comparison.

You can ping pong this discussion indefinitely because there is no absolute, divine baseline to compare against.

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autokad 2712 days ago
No. There is no discussion, the answer is absolutely no.

NYC is not PAYING 5 billion dollars. they are simply not taxing it, therefor you can not say 'what else could they have used this money on instead'.

Its like me hosting a website for many charging 100$, and one person comes to me and says they will pay me 0$ but do other stuff, but otherwise they will not use my services. I can not say 'gee, if I charged them 100$ I could do these other things with the money', because I am not paying them 100$ to use my site.

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ricardobeat 2712 days ago
It’s not semantics. The tax write-off comes from new tax revenue. You simply do not have it otherwise. It is not taken off an existing budget.

Argue as much as you want about corporate motives (and I agree with you on incentives being not ideal, even though Amazon doesn’t “do” profits), it has no bearing on how tax write-offs work.

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