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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

no individual or income taxes, how much did that weigh in the decision, or did Harry Reid weigh in?

Apple also received/is receiving additional incentives [1] for their new iCloud data centers which are being built near where Tesla is planning to put the gigafactory (the plot of land is already graded for the factory).

For those interested, Katie Fehrenbacher from Gigaom did some great coverage last month of what is happening out here RE: Tesla and Apple.[2]

1. http://www.areadevelopment.com/newsItems/8-3-2012/apple-iclo... 2. http://gigaom.com/2014/08/10/the-changing-face-of-reno-why-t...

They broke ground on the gigafactory's pit and foundation a few months back.

It didn't weigh in at all most likely (as Tesla is based in California, they're not afraid of having employees pay state income tax). If you read the article you'll find out what did weigh the decision:

> Based on Musk's public statements of what he expects a winning bid would be worth, the incentive package likely will total at least $500 million.

Which is requiring a special bill going through the NV legislature, as that level of incentive is passed the caps that are currently in place.

Benefits for the employees don't matter nearly as much as benefits for the business. The business doesn't gain from lower income taxes, unless it pays its employees less, but then there's no benefit to the employees, plus they take a pre-tax wage cut which isn't much of a feel good factor.

Employees will still have Federal income taxes at something around 25% depending on salary.

Your logic is flawed: (1) Businesses and employees can split the benefits of lower income taxes and both be better off (both in theory and in practice it is never an all or nothing choice). (2) Hopefully employees are not so stupid to care about the "feel good" of greater pre-tax income they will never see. (3) Lastly, lower salarys because of lower state taxes will also mean lower federal taxes because of progressive design federal tax rates.

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