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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy de Blasio's outrage. If he was truly worried about Amazon being a "bad neighbor," why did he have a carte blanche policy until the very moment they backed off? In fact, it took regular citizens asking the hard questions for Amazon to back off in the first place. Aren't we electing mayors to fight these fights for us?

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It's not outrage, it's spin. He represents one of the two parties that was prepared to engage in a deal that ordinary people get very angry about. (i.e. massive corporate tax breaks) So if the media plays along with the spin, he will succeed in shifting a lot of the outrage away from his administration and on to Amazon.

Well, in fairness, the outrage wouldn't be on his administration in any case.

One thing he's conveniently not mentioning is that he was opposed to giving Amazon any tax breaks or other concessions from the start. The state politicians overruled him.

Although his position, I suppose, is that Amazon should move to NYC, without any concessions. Which is not altogether off the wall. That's how it should work for ALL companies and all places. Corporate welfare is out of hand in this country. It's just a little idealistic on his part, that's just not how things work in reality. He's gonna get overruled by the higher ups every time on that one.

>Corporate welfare is out of hand in this country.

That's certainly one view. Another is that these are just breaks on excessive taxes by one government to compete with other governments that have sane corporate taxes in the first place.

I don't understand how tax reductions are considered welfare. It's not money the government has already being passed out to Amazon. The government would have still made money in this scenario, just less.

But why does amazon get to pay less than existing businesses, unfair tax laws or not?

Amazon would not pay less NYC tax than other businesses. The NYC tax breaks that Amazon was planning to take advantage of are open to every company that qualifies:

https://www.nycedc.com/program/relocation-and-employment-ass...

https://www.nycedc.com/program/industrial-commercial-abateme...

These programs are designed to encourage specific behavior, like companies moving to and making capital investments in particular areas of the city. Any company that does so qualified for a formulaic tax break. NYC did not offer any tax breaks to Amazon beyond its existing incentive programs.

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

It does appear to be a "don't hate the player, hate the game" scenario which I do think is worth looking at. I would love to see real discussion with details like the link you presented from both side, and not these emotionally charged garbage opinion pieces presented almost as articles with no sources or credibility.

>Another is that these are just breaks on excessive taxes by one government to compete with other governments that have sane corporate taxes in the first place....

Only they're not. That's not always the case.

For instance, Wisconsin has no corporate tax at all. So they made a deal to just hand over giant boxes of cash to Foxconn at each of several milestones. Think about that. ZERO tax, was just too high.

And I've discovered that Wisconsin is not the only place that has made deals like that. Look at it anyway you like, if corporations are at the point where they are openly saying:

"Paying no tax is not enough, we want you to give us money."

Something is out of place.

It’s unfair to the companies that don’t get the tax breaks. Politically, I’m not sure having an environment where special rules are granted or exempted by government officials on a selective basis is healthy either.

One of the incentives was a $505 million dollar capital grant. That is literally money that state government was going to pass out to Amazon. This is the same state government that appropriated $118 million dollars of the MTAs funding back in 2010. This helped propel NYC's transit system into the dire straits it's currently in.[1]

The money for these sorts of capital grant giveaway always comes from "somewhere."

[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2010/03/09/albany-didnt-cut-the-...

Nonsense. If he was against the deal, he wouldn’t have mended fences to be a face of it.

Yeah I'm leaning on the same side as the author in terms of blame... but this article is really bias and heavily spun.

Not to mention the tax breaks that the city was giving Amazon are still available for pretty much any company.

This line that "any company" could get these incentives from the city is being parroted and its simply not true. Of the 4 sources of incentives only two were city programs:

City: Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) and the Industrial Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP) programs. REAP credits for instance are not available to retail or hotels. Retail is particularly sensitive subject in NYC as it has been visibly blighted. Also it only applies to business relocating to either above 96th street or the outer boroughs.

State: The $505 million capital grant and $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits are most certainly not available to "pretty much any company." The eligibility guidelines are actually very specific[1]

[1] https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program

You've misunderstood what I meant. People talk as though Amazon is getting a sweetheart deal from NYS and NYC. However, what they're getting is (mostly) a predetermined set of tax breaks for relocating to LIC.

And I know about the state programs, that's why I specified about the city grants.

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