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Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

The way states in USA compete with each other by giving corporations infinite tax breaks is super toxic. Seems if you are big enough you never have to pay tax, but if you are a regular joe opening a nail salon, bend over

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Countries do it too. Looking at you, Ireland.

Its at every level of government. Suburbs fighting other suburbs to give a huge tax break to a potential office where the workers have the off chance of spending some sales taxes buying a cup of coffee in the city. Usually the workers don’t even live in the suburb where they work so they aren’t paying into all those larger tax pools, merely being a burden on the road system. Then when the tax break starts to expire the company extorts the government to maintain it or they simply leave.

It's not toxic. Competition is the only factor that makes things better, or at least stops them getting worse.

I think the competition argument is stronger when considering competition between states. What seems more towards the toxic side is when within a state some businesses get tax breaks and others don't based on lobbying effort and not based on some broader policy that is neutral towards specific businesses.

I agree with that, but it's difficult to say what cities should or shouldn't be able to enact. They do have different requirements to their region, and you wouldn't want e.g. a minimum wage law that might be appropriate for a city to destroy employability in the rest of the state.

Simple - bespoke deals. You cant jusy offer a deal to Microsoft for example, you have tk offer the same deal/tax breaks to everyone who writes software.

If Microsoft doesnt need to pay taxes, then I shouldn't have to either. Or we all pay.

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