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 quoted here. If you consider the fact that Amazon is going to probably pay much more in taxes over the lifetime of their offices in NY then it seems like a reasonable deal for their government to make.