END BIDDING WARS FOR CORPORATE RELOCATION

[Sherman A1]

The recent circus surrounding Amazon’s HQ2 project should highlight how damaging the practice of allowing localities to ‘bid’ for investment from corporations can be to our country, and how important it is for us to find a solution to this problem.

You can’t blame the corporation for trying to save money, and you can’t blame the localities for trying to attract investment and new jobs. Because no one has an incentive to stop this practice, it continues unabated.

However, it amounts to up to $90b a year of tax breaks and cash grants. Since states and other localities can’t run a deficit or print money, these subsidies amount to money that could otherwise go to school, road repair, and other important functions. These incentives are meant to steal jobs and investment from other states, not from offshoring or to entice businesses to expand when they otherwise wouldn’t.

There’s also evidence that corporations start with an idea of where they want to move, and then use a public bidding war to get tax breaks from those locations. Considering Amazon’s business, DC and NY were likely locations for HQ2 even before they received 238 proposals from cities across the country

https://www.yang2020.com/policies/end-relocation-bidding/

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Absolutely. And after seeing Foxconn's fiasco in WI, and nothing on the scale of what was ...

promised will be built, and literally $ billions of tax credits exchanged for thousands of jobs (yeah, right), this should stick out in everybody's mind as a glaring example of politics attempting to drive capitalism (or vice versa). It doesn't work. Some businesses actually have it in their business models to exploit these tax credits and won't consider a build in an area unless they receive them.

The Amazon fiasco is a joke. When a business is too big, it's too big, and it sucks all of the oxygen out of the room, leaving nothing for the remaining businesses. I kind of wondered how 1 big business could bet tax credits and all of the others not. Seems kind of discriminatory to me.

I wonder if there is a nationwide tracking system of the tax credits issued by states and/or cities, and those credits actually used? And if the credits issued actually resulted in any jobs created, etc.?

[George II]

2. In New York, the tax credit would have been a refund on taxes already paid after certain....

....criteria were met, most importantly job creation.

So, for example (not real numbers) if at the end of the year Amazon paid $50 million in taxes and they reached the pre-determined level of created jobs, they would get $10 million back. The state and city would still have $40 million in taxes more than if Amazon were not in the city, and there would be thousands of jobs created - each person paying state and city taxes. And all the businesses in the area would have benefited by having all those people in the neighborhood.

How is that bad?

[Sherman A1]

6. I know just watching Walmart try to squeeze

tax breaks from the government in my local community was enough to drive one crazy and in the end amazingly after the City Council said no to this and no to that, the Walmart store magically still appeared on the site.

[BlueFlorida]

3. Wrong forum I think nt

[Sherman A1]

4. Why?

It is a candidate's policy statement on an issue. Is that not what this forum is at least in part about?

[BlueFlorida]

5. oh ... my apologies nt

[MineralMan]

7. You might want to indicate Yang: in the thread title.

It isn't clear, until you look at the link.

[Autumn]

8. A business that can't expand on it's own shouldn't expand on the taxpayers dime. nt

[denverbill]

9. This should especially be true for professional sports franchises.

Every year owners try to force cities to build them new stadiums with taxpayer money and threaten to move if their demands aren't met. This in an environment where leagues are monopolies. A city with a stadium can't just start an NFL franchise.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. Don't get me started on sports stadiums and arenas.

Megabuck team owners make their demands to mayors and city councils, threatening to move their team unless the taxpayers build a new stadium for them. And the cities fold like cheap lawn chairs every time, while taxpayers get stuck with the bill - usually another sales tax.

Fuck them all.

[dalton99a]

11. Robber barons must rob