Amazon HQ2: NY Fiasco & $0 in Federal Taxes, Say Critics, Confirm Amazon As Deadbeat Corporation

- 'NY HQ Fiasco & $0 in Federal Taxes, Say Critics, Confirm Amazon's Status as Deadbeat Corporation. "Why should corporations that contribute nothing to the pot be in a position to take billions from the public?" Common Dreams, Feb. 15, 2019. Excerpts:

A day after Amazon announced it was canceling plans to establish a new headquarters in New York City, critics pointed to a new report on the company's federal taxes for 2018 as more evidence that its exit was no loss for New York.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) on Friday released data showing that despite making more than $11 billion in profits in 2018, Amazon paid zero dollars in federal corporate taxes for the second year in a row.

The company contributed nothing to public coffers thanks to President Donald Trump's tax plan that was passed into law in 2017 as well as tax credits for executive stock options.

The news follows Amazon's announcement that it was backing out of a deal in which New York State was to give the company nearly $3 billion in tax incentives if it went ahead with building a new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio had offered the incentives during Amazon's 14-month nationwide search for a new home—denounced as a "race to the bottom" by critics.

American cities were pitted against each other to see which government would offer the company—run by the world's richest man—the biggest savings. As Good Jobs First director Greg LeRoy said Thursday, the competition exposed corporate tax incentives to the larger public as an exercise in out-of-control corporate greed aided by politicians.

Opponents in New York's city council and the state legislature refused to buckle to Amazon's demands," wrote David Dayen at In These Times. "They doubted the necessity of handing over taxpayer cash to the world's most valuable company, at a time when New York has struggled to fund public transit and affordable housing. Furthermore, they feared a worsening of congestion, gentrification, and displacement in Long Island City." More...

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/02/15/new-york-hq-fiasco-and-0-federal-taxes-say-critics-confirm-amazons-status-deadbeat



- New Yorkers mobilized to stop Amazon from bringing its new headquarters to New York City. The company announced Thursday that it was canceling plans to build a campus in Long Island City, Queens.
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New York advocates studied what happened in Seattle since the rise of Amazon, one of the Four Horsemen of Tech.

*SEATTLE UNDER SIEGE* (City Journal, Fall 2018). "Seattle is under siege. Over the past five years, the Emerald City has seen an explosion of homelessness, crime, and addiction. In its 2017 point-in-time count of the homeless, King County social-services agency All Home found 11,643 people sleeping in tents, cars, and emergency shelters. Property crime has risen to a rate two and a half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s. Cleanup crews pick up tens of thousands of dirty needles from city streets and parks every year."...
Read More, https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-homelessness

Despite millions being spent to help, Seattle's homelessness went up 4 % in 2018. Washington state's number of people living homeless was up 5.6 percent- more than any state, save Mass., New York & Texas. Seattle Times, Dec. 17, 2018.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/homelessness-rose-just-a-bit-this-year-in-the-u-s-heres-how-seattle-compares/