AT&T giving $1000 bonus to all its employees because of tax reform

AT&T is not tech but Alphabet is?

I often wonder what HN means by technology and engineering. It seems to mean websites and the backend to support it. Sure it’s “complicated” and multi layered but so is “finnegan’s wake”

For me technology means micro-fabrication bridges, substations and OSes. AT&T has delivered more “tech” than any other company ever!

Google’s innovations? Repackaging existing solutions and funding, yet to be launched, Moon shots.

EDIT it goes without saying that AT&T is a shadow of its former self.

This is wrong for a number of reasons...

The GOP just rammed through a huge tax cut/deficit ballooning bill because their financial overlords threatened to shut off the money spigot if they didn't deliver something of benefit to them.

Key votes were won not by "jobs" but by offering cash, either by expanding/reducing the cut to certain programs and financial kickbacks (Corker kickback).

The jobs promised often never arrive or stay if they do, but the checks always clear. This is the case as seen in examples as varied as the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act (which did no such thing) or "small government fiscal conservative" Curt Schilling bilking tens of millions of dollars out of Rhode Island taxpayers to prop up his failing video game company (38 studios) before it bottomed out.

Lobbying is not about "winning" but about access and connections. An entertaining explanation of this is offered up in "Turkmeniscam" by Ken Silverstein.

AT&T is a tech company, one that predates Alphabet by a century or so and is looking to operate across more of the US (this is where connections matter). Alphabet may not have a reason to get Martha Blackburn in their pocket, but you can bet AT&T does (and did).

Thanks for this perspective. I've always wondered why the US tech giants, seemingly flush with more cash than most don't have more influence over policy.

It's also why all the mega tech companies are looking to diversify their employee concentrations. Amazon is desperate to start expanding outside of Seattle. Google and Facebook have set up several other US campuses. Companies like Oracle and Microsoft already have several locations around the US. I would expect those efforts to go into overdrive in the next decade.

Why would Alphabet lobby against a corporate tax cut? I don't think they did. This has nothing to do with the right wing cause-celebre of painting Google as an evil liberal company.

I think this analysis is right, but it ignores the blue side of the bargain -- unless you mean the Dems care less about unionised workers than the Repubs. Are SV companies able to influence the Dems by some other means, or is it that the blue-team influences them.

if I where an M&P grade in ATT (which all there tech professionals will be) I would be royally pissed off about this.

BTW if google did recognise unions they could also do this :-)

Isn't it votes, and your saying jobs are more powerful inducer of those things?

I agree with your broader point, but Google is not helpless here, even though AT&T employs about three times as many people. Google employs 74,000 people in CA, NY, MI, PA, GA, TX, CO, MA, WA, VA, and DC. Five of those are red or swing states.

Trump just praised the AT&T announcement in front of the white house, looks to be working already!

In terms of garnering goodwill with the President, I think the real sticking point is CNN.

A $1000 bonus is a wonderful x-mas gift. Why would a company attribute the gift to the government instead of simply saying "We're AT&T. We're awesome. Here's $1000" unless there was motivation to do so?

Unless you can answer that question you should be cynical.

Giving a grand to Linemen (Engineers) isn't going to help that.

You nailed it.

20,000 is a whole lot less than 200,000.

EDIT: Also, those 20K you mentioned are essentially getting both. It's a totally separate bonus.

That's almost guaranteed to be incorrect, and is extremely cynical.

The workers receiving those $1000 bonus checks, are not going to see a hit from the state & local deduction changes. Unless you think those people are making $250,000 per year and living in homes that cost $1,500,000 (they're not; and if they were, not only would the $1k not matter, they can easily afford the very slightly higher taxes).

Those workers are also covered under corporate health insurance. The only valid argument about rising healthcare costs in that regard, is that it detracts from their potential salaries over time (debatable whether that benefit would be redirected to salaries or to AT&T's net income figure, were healthcare costs lower).

If you're working for AT&T aren't you on corporate insurance?

It's like they have accountants or something.

It's probably small, but I bet there's some measurable savings in terms of employee churn. Even if you delay some of the turnover for a year because of happy employees, that's a lot of HR expense saved. I wish there was a way to find out.

Strange because the price is nearly the same.

The fact that the tax cuts are permanent and this is a one time bonus certainly makes it seem like a publicity stunt, possibly related to currying favor for the merger with Time Warner.

That said, if you take their stated reason at face value, the tax cuts aren't directly providing the cash for the bonuses, so they can do it now based on projected savings later.

They really cannot go back and change something for the previous year because of a whole host of issues. The simplest is people / businesses have already been paying this years taxes under this years rules quarterly. Its already going to be a mess for software developers to rush out changes to their payroll customers for a tax plan that goes into effect some 12 days after its passage.

You mean why they are putting it off for a whole week and a half!?

I don't think anyone would get their taxes done on time if it applied retroactively to 2017, and having a different tax code for December 21-31 seems like a bad idea also. I think applying the change on January 1st is ambitious if anything.

They are already screwing everybody over so they have the money... and they want to keep Trump.

Probably because AT&T has no problem fronting the cash that they'll make next year, but this lets them get a publicity bounce because it's very topical right now.

One time quarterly hit vs ongoing expense. Same amount of good press, but much cheaper.

Same reason they wouldn't lower everyone's salary by $1,000 if a new tax went into effect.

propaganda

1k isn't shit for a family anymore. 1 bill and its gone

Alternatively you can leave the US corporate income tax rate where it is, which is the second highest effective rate in the OECD, and uncompetitive with dozens of other major economies. You can then watch a lot more massive corporations take their headquarters, R&D, white collar jobs, investment, etc. outside of the US.

Particularly small & mid-size US manufacturing is at a severe disadvantage with the high US effective corporate income tax rate. US manufacturing companies pay twice the corporate income tax rate as their peers in China. That means less capital available for investing into expansion, productivity, innovation, et al.

Pretending the US doesn't have to compete with the rest of the world, is an ideal recipe for economic disaster. The US should have slashed its corporate income tax rate decades ago. And it should raise the income taxes on the top 1/4 to pay for it (they get a benefit back in rising stock prices, as they're the primary stock owners in the US). You want to lure foreign capital investment and foreign corporations to US shores, you don't do that with high corporate tax rates.

A rather shortsighted way to look at things. How do you know this isn't just the tip of the iceberg? How do you know that they won't use that savings to further invest in the company which in turn could create thousands of new jobs? (EDIT: I just re-read the article, and it says in addition to the bonus, they'll be investing an additional $1B in the US in 2018, and that "Every $1 billion in capital invested in the telecom industry creates about 7,000 jobs for American workers, research shows.")

Also, what's with the negative outlook? I'll bet all 200K of those employees are pretty happy about that $1K bonus (on top of saving another $2K/yr in taxes, totaling an extra $3K+ in their pockets, over 10 years = $30K+).

The tax bill just passed and companies are already proving the naysayers wrong, and it seems like people are just trying to find every excuse as to why it's supposedly not actually a good thing that people are going to be able to keep thousands of bucks more every year. Talk about bah humbug!

$1,000 bonus for 250k employees is $250,000,000 first of all... Secondly, they announced a $1B increase in capital expenditures for next year so that's $1.25B. That's now 54.3% which is a great "trickle down" effect.

Oh and just FYI, the average American family, married couple with 2 kids making the median American income of $60k after this tax bill will now pay $0 in taxes. Instead they will receive $70 refund. Before they'd be paying $1700 a year. So anyone that fits that demographic making less than $60k a year will get a tax refund instead of paying any federal income tax. The Bush cuts were garbage, this is a middle class tax cut.

1,000 * 250,000 = 250,000,000