This is uninformed at best.
"Enough" NYers making noise consisted of a couple of politicians, and some vocal people who showed up at hearings just to berate Amazon board members. Amazon chose to stop subjecting their employees to a ludicrous public circus and walked away from the deal.
No, it was not a majority opposition. The polls that were taken, by multiple sources, showed a majority of New Yorkers favored the deal.
Amazon said they backed out because a number of state and local level officials made it known they weren't wanted there.
The deal was made in secrecy, people backlashed, and enough people complained that elected officials represented their constituents and started to fight with Amazon. If the majority wanted the deal why weren't politicians fighting for it and against the politicians who were fighting against it? You may be correct, the majority could lie with being for Amazon; I just assumed both parties would be fighting for their constituents.
Also, why wasn't the deal put out in the open for the public to weigh in on?
Yes this is a private business deal but the economic ramifications, positive or negative should be public facing because they are so huge. It's the reason Apples campus in California was done in a public setting and ruled on by the government.
How much NY state tax did Google pay last year? I tried to find it, but can't. I did find this though: Google hiding behind shell companies for tax breaks.
I'd also like to note that Google's new investment came as a response to the Amazon deal, it wasn't something they were previously considering and were just looking to prevent Amazon monopolizing all the local tech talent. It wasn't some noble move to bring jobs to NY.
And if you truly "would love to read more about it" you could've googled something mentioned in the letter: NY Excelsior Tax credit.
There are other programs as well. I can speak from experience. Back at the turn of the millenium I was co-founder of a startup software developer. If we could've kept the company alive a few months more, we'd have been entitled to a huge tax break. Unfortunately, we were the victim of a huge IP theft of our primary product and couldn't stay afloat. But that is neither here nor there. It was an incentive program to operate a business in NY with NY-based employees for at least 3 years. As I said, NY does this all the time.
And this ignores that NY state wasn't giving Amazon anything. It keeps being treated as though NYS was handing Amazon $3B just for the privilege of having them come here. Amazon was simply getting tax credits to apply against taxes they'd eventually have to pay, all the while generating billions in salaries/revenue for NY.
Google's unethical methods of hiding revenue, or any other company for that matter, has nothing to do with NY's tax policy for businesses. They are mutually exclusive. Additionally NY didn't give Google any tax credits for the billion dollar campus investment which means they aren't supporting those practices. Further invalidating your point for
this argument
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I'm not claiming Google is a more noble company than Amazon or they are investing in a campus because they are noble.
My point is that you don't need to offer lucrative tax incentives to bring a company like Amazon to NY.
Companies will come without incentive. Amazon needs to be in NY to be competitive and continue to grow their business. Google investing $1B with no additional tax credits proves my point.
My point is that if you give Amazon a $3 billion dollar tax credit, then Google is going to be asking for a similar credit, as well as Facebook, and Twitter.
You know who should be getting those tax credits?
Companies like yours who actually needed it. The excelsior jobs program is a great opportunity to bring companies to NY who otherwise wouldn't come because of this market's expenses and taxes. It's also a fund with limits. It only looks to give out between $50-$250mil in tax credits a year. The fund is also only worth $2.1 billion in totality. Top Market cap value companies like Amazon don't qualify for this program.
NYC is the advertising capital of the country and arguably the world (behind or inline with London), and it's probably a top reason they chose NYC as their next headquarters. Working in the industry, I would personally benefit immensely from Amazon moving to NY, as jobs are limited and qualified employees are not.
I get that Amazon was going to bring in 27 billion in taxes, and we don't just have $3 billion lying around waiting to be spent, but we desperately need that $3 billion.
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of paying $40 for round trip travel from Long Island/Brooklyn to Jersey to help pay for bridge repairs and construction that should be publicly funded. I'm tired of the subway prices continuing to go up when they continue to be delayed. The city continues to become more and more crowded, prices continue to rise, and our public transportation infrastructure is already crumbling. If a company is going to bring in 45,000 jobs and further deteriorate that infrastructure they need to be part of the solution to helping the city fix their problems.
Bezos should pay for the next $0.25 increase on subways not the lower and middle class.