#YCFundMeToo

YC Fund "Me Too" -- I think you might want to let PR and HR take a look at this before you move forward with this name.

If Amazon wanted a strong transportation system they could have demanded some of their tax break went towards that. They did not.

NYC is already the second largest tech hub in the nation, as well as a global leader in a wide variety of industries.

If anything, Amazon moving in, and this I doubt, would have made it less affordable than it already was to live here.

NYC population is 08.6M

NYS population is 19.85M

Just the city is forty percent of the population. If you add the surrounding areas, you'll be a majority (I think they'd want things done in the city). How does the city not have better representation in the state assembly? How does upstate keep getting away with swindling the city?

As James Damore recently tweeted: "Amazon abuses its near-monopoly to bankrupt its competitors by selling at a loss, threaten brands with counterfeits until they sell on Amazon, and use third-party merchants’ data to undercut them. All while being subsidized billions by the government." https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/1094985319575969792

Honestly, why is this so hard when so much of the rest of the developed world manages to do it so well?

New Yorkers already pay tremendous tax dollars yet we have the mass transit that we do. The idea that there are no tax dollars is a myth. The funds are simply siphoned off to some other who-knows-what, and the remaining is poorly spent. The purported Amazon tax base would have likely been spent the same.

I am not advocating for big businesses evading tax mind you. Just suggesting it would probably still be a boon for the state tax income if a bunch of tech wages migrated to the NY tax base.

[1]: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/amzn/financials

I'm a nonprofit fundraising professional, and I could probably talk about all the reasons why that is a horrible idea for 2-3 hours straight without repeating myself. I mean, at the very least, it's a bad idea for the same reason that exposing all the financials of every individual, or all other organizations, with the added benefit that you'd be opening people up to harassment for supporting certain social causes or belonging to certain religious groups. You might as well start a government mailing list called "hate crime targets."

If you think there are a lot of non-charitable transactions occurring using charities as a front, it would be a way better idea to just have the IRS audit more 501c3 orgs.

If you are trying to decrease fraud, it would almost certainly make more sense to audit wealthy individuals and for-profit corporations far more often.

There is information in people's finances that should be 100% private. What if an employer looks at the financials of someone applying for a job and sees they claimed $100k in medical expenses last year because they had cancer? Companies will do that if they have the ability, and people will lose jobs because of it.

It doesn't matter if you make it illegal. I worked a recruiting agency for a while, and illegal hiring practices are incredibly common.

https://www.open990.com/org/020716277/the-lebron-james-famil...

A good portion of all of that is stuff Amazon could compile, but they got cities across the country to donate probably tens of thousands of hours of taxpayer salaries to do it instead.

The nature of special incentives each proposal offered - custom ones for Amazon-only, or unusual ones - will also have told them which cities they've got extra leverage over if they come offering a smaller project like a distribution center.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/11/the-extreme-amazon-bidd...

> The most jarring incentive reportedly comes out of Chicago, which, under state law, could redirect between 50 and 100 percent of the income taxes incurred by Amazon employees right back to Amazon.

Basically the state law allows employers who create new jobs to not have to pay their portion of the employment tax for a few years, and that tax credit applies to every company.

I'm pretty happy with the way Illinois and Chicago played their cards with Amazon, we were basically like "We've got a lot of great shit, and if you come here you can take advantage of this tax credit." We didn't offer Amazon any special treatment.

Stealing the worker's surplus labor value isn't enough?

A big difference is that contrived drama is at the very core of the entertainment business of professional sports. It makes for much of the entertainment! It's less helpful in the more mundane enterprise of 'building a bunch of offices and warehouses'.

People in Long Island City calling their political representatives and yelling at them about how they don't want your offices and warehouses is not business well done if you have 'building warehouses and offices' as a goal.

First, state income tax is exactly that, income tax imposed by the state, and governed by the state. There may be local jurisdictions that impose additional income tax but any savings there would be trivial.

While sports are important to the local economy, my understanding is that they are relatively minor at the state level.

Second, LeBron (and other athletes) earn playing income in every jurisdiction they play in, not based solely on the jurisdiction that the team is based in.

This means they are responsible for filing taxes in each of these jurisdiction.

In addition to playing income, they make money through endorsements and other investments. These are considered income in whatever state they claim is their residence.

It's in a players interest to establish a residence in an area with favorable tax laws.

Cities may try to woo elite players to join them, but tax savings isn't very compelling.

That’s pretty funny how well settled that area of Law is, and yet again Amazon thinks it’s pretty special in that regard also...historically they haven’t paid those taxes either (state or local) and there was just a Supreme Court case confirming that in fact amazon isn’t special and that all this time they themselves should have been paying taxes where they had been selling/shipping goods.

That’s cute, but not the way the Law works generally. Maybe you can point to a single state where the law is different, until then I’ll just say the general rule is if the merchant makes of $x they are required by law to collect sales tax. Where or not the merchant does, they will be liable to the state for payment of the same, not the individual consumers.

If the law worked the way you represent why would any merchant collect and pay sales tax to the states?

Do you have a citation for this? I'm skeptical. I live and work in Texas. When I travel to my company's office in NJ, effectively earning income for a week in that state, I don't pay NJ income tax on that income.

Edit to add: According to my interpretation of this: https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/pdf/current/1040nr...

Assuming your income is over $20,000, you ARE required to file a NJ state tax return.

Also, note that even if you don't file a tax return, doesn't mean you are exempted from doing so.

Example, as a citizen of Texas, you are also required to pay use tax on any items aquired out of state/country and used in the state. My assumption is that you don't also pay that either, even thought you are legally required to do so. It turns out that use Tax is particularly difficult to audit and collect for, especially without a mandatory return like state income tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax

Uh, state income taxes can approach 10%. This is not “trivial”.

http://www.tax-rates.org/taxtables/income-tax-by-state

The original proposal was that star athletes attempt to negotiate tax incentives with cities, in the same vein Amazon did with NYC (and many other large corporations do).

City income taxes add a trivial percent to the total income tax rate when compared to the state income tax level. Thus, if you got incentives from a city, they would amount to trivial amount of savings.

Athletes would need to negotiate at the state level in order to have a material effect on their taxes.

I hope that clarifies my point.

I imagine Athletes pay accountants who are well versed in how to fill out those forms, and, at least in the NFL's case, a lot of players compensation may be in bonuses, and not necessarily game-day checks (which would be subject to local jurisdictional income laws).

As is common with other, bigger ego, basketball players

Obviously NBA rules relate to tampering would come into play, but it would be a compelling story for the 24 hour sports new cycle.

I've read about athletes at least considering the income tax of a state in their decision, but I'm not sure it's ever been a deciding factor.

Getting reelected will be an issue.

1. Basketball is entertainment, and 'The Decision' was the result of years of speculation by the fans and the media. Furthermore you see similar spectacles for such things as National Signing Day, where top recruits hold press conferences to announce what college they are attending.

2. There is animosity and jealousy towards 'entitled millionaire athletes' that was made worse with players being able to control their own destiny instead of suffering under terrible management. "If they get to choose where to work and do so with their friends, why can't I" yells Joe Six-Pack.

3. The super team. Somehow NBA fans forgot or were ignorant of how absolutely stacked championship teams had been throughout history, featuring multiple hall of fame players and coaches. Elements of #2 play into this as well where it is management, not players, that should build championship teams.

4. A player like LBJ is far, far more likely to deliver (which he did with multiple championships) in the NBA than a company like Amazon is to deliver a value worth the taxpayer dollars they absorb.