

Blackmail the Government and You Can Pay Less Tax – Twitter Style - camz
http://cameronkeng.com/hn-blackmail-the-government-and-you-can-pay-less-tax-twitter-style/

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tzs
Blackmail means threatening to reveal someone's secrets unless they do what
you want them to do. I see nothing in anything the article alleges, or in
anything I've read elsewhere, that even hints that Twitter has blackmailed any
government, or blackmailed any non-goverment for that matter.

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camz
Actually, blackmail is the coercion of a benefit derived from the act of a
threat. Twitter clearly threatened the city along with a number of other
startups in the SF area to move the jobs and tax revenue to another local town
or city if SF didn't abate their payroll taxes. Thus, blackmail is a justified
and correct term for such an act. But, I will concede that coercion is an
equal substitute.

While I don't fault twitter for their business decision. I do find it fair to
call the kettle black when it is true. I generally don't have a problem with
companies tax planning within the means of the law to achieve their tax goals,
but simply flat out threatening the community that created you doesn't seem
100% fair either.

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fleitz
If you crowd sourced the problem you could probably make it work. Call it
MoveOn.com, a group of people thinking about moving to another municipality
get together sign some sort of binding contract forcing them to move to
another municipality or not, the MoveOn representatives then canvass the two
governments for the best incentives to stay / move, the company takes a
percentage of the incentives negotiated. It could be instrumental in improving
neighborhoods, schools and the general community, not to mention providing a
much needed tax base to impoverished neighborhoods that could benefit from a
better tax base. I'm sure with the state of legislation post-Kelo you could
make it work with some helpful developers.

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camz
Wow that's an amazing concept. I never thought of something like that. I think
that with the proper idea for the "MoveOn.com" platform to work would be a
great way for the average joe to "lobby" like the big guys.

GE worked the hell out of the system when they got congress to pass their
"green or re-usable energy credits." The energy credits often had more than
50% of the tax savings going to the company.

