

Twitter wants to leave SF for a suburb over $1,500/employee in taxes - spenrose
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/03/twitter-tax-break-takes-stage

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rick888
I hope they leave. High taxes for businesses have consequences and more people
need to be aware of this. Eventually, companies will be leaving the
state+country and not just the city.

It's funny, because businesses have been getting tax hikes for a long time
(especially in states where most are taxed on gross revenue and not just net
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_receipts_tax>). When the average citizen
gets the exact same treatment, we have protesters in the streets saying it
isn't fair.

This is why I feel we should have a flat tax across the board. This way,
everyone is in the same boat when it comes to tax increases.

~~~
spenrose
If SF were a low-tax place that noticed a bunch of businesses coming in and
decided to harvest cash from them, this line of reasoning would make sense.
Instead, SF is a high-cost, high-tax place where businesses are founded in
droves. Twitter is trying to skim the value of massive social investment in SF
by moving just outside the city borders. It is not trying to move to Lawrence
KS, San Luis Obispo CA, Rochester NY, or any other low-cost city with a well-
educated workforce, behavior which would support your thesis. Nor are many
tech startups being founded in those places. Large investments in social and
physical capital have consequences: fantastic, $100K+ engineering jobs and
$1.5K taxes to pay for the schools, police, and roads that support them.

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ajg1977
Let them leave. They're well funded and there are companies in San Francisco
with more employees and that pay more taxes.

a) In six years time its more likely that they'll look for an extension of any
breaks than begin paying them.

b) If they plan to grow to 1500+ employees after 2011 I can't see them being
able to stay in that location anyway.

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jellicle
The summary at the end of the article is funny, and it excluded one line:

    
    
        $535,500 Twitter’s annual payroll tax payment
        $0 Amount Twitter pays if it relocates to Brisbane
        $22M Potential value of payroll tax break to Twitter over six years
        350 Current Twitter employees
        750 Work force projection by July 2011
        1,500 Work force projection by July 2012
        3,000 Work force projection by July 2013
        $4.59M Annual payroll tax payment to city upon expiration of deal
    

The line it forgot was:

    
    
        $0 Actual annual tax payment to city after Twitter negotiates another
        tax break sometime in year six, spending about $1 million bribing
        enough city officials to get the tax break passed
    

Yay.

