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Comment by lurr | Hacker News Reader

They will get more once they figure out which city they can use to extort seattle. Then more again when they use Seattle to extort tax breaks from their new HQ.

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I hate the fact that's probably exactly what will happen. We need better ways from keeping corporations from taking advantage of the tax payer unfairly.

What else can you do when cities want/need large corporations more than more than the corporation needs them? I mean one of the wealthiest areas in my metro area is sustained mostly by a single fortune 500. If they threatened to leave you better believe they'll grovel at the font of wealth that allows their entire community to exist.

and if the next city tells them to get fucked how many times can they manage to move around before they get the message?

Amazon is going to uproot huge amounts of engineers? Doubt it. I wouldn't move just to help jeff make a bit more.

Stop growth in that city and increase headcount exclusively elsewhere. Growth rate for headcount is something like 10-20% a year.

This is why I think devolution is a bad idea. We already have an international race to the bottom on aspects such as tax rates and environmental impact, why compound it with devolution? In the UK, local authorities can set tax rates, but they can't carve out exceptions or change the tax schedule. Seems like a good system to me.

The answer (perhaps unfortunately) is to tax individuals who work at said company, because corporations can move around very freely. People, much less so.

Just like NFL/NBA owners. Threaten to take the team to another city.

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