Tax Breaks for Twitter Bring Benefits and Criticism | Hacker News Reader

Tax Breaks for Twitter Bring Benefits and Criticism

wsj.com

42 pointsanishkothari12 comments

Benefits from shareholders in Twitter... criticism from people tired of this. I don't care how many heartwarming stories from the bright side of trickle-down economics is trotted it, it isn't the norm.

Unable to see any trickle down here. So many rich people have invested in twitter and haven't seen any decent profits while thousands of employees continue to draw decent salary.

The norm has seen two decades of middle and lower class decline. The heartwarming stories are people actually being helped.

If tax incentives keep investment local, rather than profits in off-shore havens where taxes aren't assessed anyway, I fail to see the issue.

I'm all on board with closing off shore holdings loopholes for billion dollar corporations. But until that happens, this seems positive to me.

Edit: have you been to the Tenderloin? I ask not as a gotcha but whether you understand the state it and it's people are in (which you may very well).

I think this is spot on. Companies would not move to the Tenderloin without some benefits and this could change the area for better. It has a pretty good location so it should not take a lot.

Why do companies need benefits to move to a part of a city that is cheap (well, comparatively?)

The city council in Austin was giving away millions of dollars in tax breaks to companies to come here and this was amidst all the hype. The companies wanted to come here anyways, the locals might as well gouge em for all they're worth!

> Why do companies need benefits to move to a part of a city that is cheap (well, comparatively?)

I wouldnt be comfortable working late in the Tenderloin on a regular basis. I'll pass through when my destination takes me that way, but I'm always very aware of my surroundings when I do. A company would have to entice me to work there via money or a hell of a great culture. Chances are slim that I'll come to harm on a given occasion, but with increased exposure comes increased risk.

Therein lies the problem. We're not talking about down on your luck, rough chance of circumstances for many of the residents here, we're talking about mental illness and all too often violent drug addicted reactions. For every person standing against gentrification, there are probably a dozen who could stand to benefit from it.

Who cares about the "area." Patches of ground don't need to be improved, because they are happy as they are - not being alive. Improvements would benefit the inhabitants of an area. So if your improvement of a patch of ground involves removing the inhabitants, you should really stop rationalizing what you're doing.

What inhabitants were removed? Didn't they move into an unused building?

If you fail to see the issue, here is a paragraph from the article highlighting it:

Companies with more than $1 million in payroll signed community benefits agreements in exchange for the tax breaks. In 2014 and 2015 alone, those agreements yielded 17,000 volunteer hours, $1.7 million in cash grants and $2.5 million in donations, according to a city tally. The tax breaks have spurred job growth and revenue from sales and property taxes, the city said. But the tax breaks have so far cost the city nearly $40 million.

So, companies received tax breaks that were supposed to help the community but seems to have cost it millions. I don't see how anyone here commenting can come to another conclusion given this sentence.

The only argument I could see making is one where the money would have never been spent in this way, but that is an argument that we should pay corporations millions so that we can get a pittance for our poor; this doesnt make sense to me.

> But the tax breaks have so far cost the city nearly $40 million.

This assumes a world where Twitter (or a Twitter like) company would have moved into what was an effectively abandoned building. They didn't displace $40M of tax revenue that would have been there and it's unlikely that they would have moved there. Now that neighborhood has a market, a coffee shop, several restaurants and a bar (all paying taxes that likely wouldn't have existed).

It seems like the city got more than they were hoping for. The neighborhood is improved, safer and no one was displaced. Square and Uber are next door and aren't getting any tax breaks (they moved into the old bank of america building which wasn't eligible for any of the tax breaks). The taxes from those two new companies along with the restaurants, shops, etc don't seem to be reflected in the (what seems to be) completely made up $40 M number.

Feel free to quote an opposing piece of literature that has some facts and I will be interested in what you have to say, but the numbers quoted in the material posted are fairly stark; when you say things like "completely made up" or make claims that I sort of addressed in my original comment you should probably throw a link or two to try to back it up or it sounds like you just have a dog in the race.

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