If we keep putting special-interest clauses in our tax codes like these 'business opportunity zones' without expecting everyone who is capable to come in and exploit them to the maximum extent possible, that is really on us.
Of course! However, that argument is a bit moot when you consider the overlap that exists between political power and economic power, and more crucially this: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE
The intent is that people will show up and use them.
The main intent is that they be things like machine shops and the like that supply jobs and a bit of spin of economic activity (workers go get lunch etc).
Having people work in a coworking space may not be what they had in mind, but if those people go out to lunch in the zone, mission accomplished.
You can argue if that works well or not but the tax advantage does not exist in a vacuum.
In many states OZs were selected as political handouts and were placed in areas where development was already planned. The characterization that they lifted up poor regions is pure horseshit.
It adds insult to injury that a billionaire real estate mogul made EXACTLY this argument when selling his tax policy and business conduct (I’m just being a good businessman, and I’ll fix the rigged system by getting rid of loopholes!), then turned around and got rid of special deductions for normal folks and created a massive special interest handout for real estate moguls.
This particular example inherited his fathers business, which was valuable enough that a half-share was sufficient to move him onto the Forbes 400 list.
Although his father also trained him not to be decent or honest.
I assume you're talking about the SALT deduction? The one that mostly benefits the highest income earners?
Interesting how when people personally benefit from a tax break it's "entirely justified", but when someone else does it's a "massive special interest handout".
A two earner household with a cop and a nurse benefited from SALT.
The average beneficiary of opportunity zones is generationally wealthy. A pair of tech workers pulling down 7 figures a year are stupidly wealthy and still would probably not have enough capital to be the primary beneficiary of an opportunity fund.
I’m not going to defend the salt deduction because I’m not a fan of it for the reasons you mention, but comparing SALT to opportunity zones is genuinely delusional.
Pitting the lower middle class against the upper middle class over a modestly regressive tax break while folks who haven’t worked in three generations pay a 0% tax rate on the fruits of others’ labor.
... by investing in places deemed in need of investment, thereby providing jobs and skills and tax base (property, services, income taxes, unemployment taxes, growth in surrounding infrastructure)......
When an investor gets a billion dollar return, remember that is the value from a company that likely provides billions more to local economies.
> When an investor gets a billion dollar return, remember that is the value from a company that likely provides billions more to local economies.
I have no idea why that would be true, especially if it's an online business where highly paid people go to a campus and don't leave until it's time to drive home.
All Forbes 400 are billion dollar businesses. A tiny, tiny fraction are the type you describe. What makes you think most businesses are your cherry picked type? I see no evidence they constitute any more than a miniscule number of such companies.
How many don't pay local property, income, unemployment, and other taxes?
Not every new company is an online mythical virtual company. When someone presents reasonable evidence, if your first reaction is to latch onto outliers and pretend they're common, you should check your biases versus reality.
The Forbes 400 are people (the 400 richest). You are thinking about the Fortune 100/500.
We're on a site about tech startups, reading an article about tax avoidance by a tech startup and many people on the board are saying they want to do that tax avoidance. I don't think I have to worry that I cherry picked the type of company as a tech startup.
> How many don't pay local property, income, unemployment, and other taxes?
Well, we're only talking about the founders/investors paying taxes (cause this is referencing their capital gains). So, the founders wouldn't pay local property (in the low-income district they commute to) or unemployment taxes at all, and the vast majority of their income comes from capital gains, which this is avoiding, so yeah, they don't really pay that either.
The tax breaks in question are not specific to your goal post moving subset of tech startups. The founder tax breaks are offered because they bring the benefits I mentioned to the areas specified in the tax breaks.
Furthermore, you're replying to my comment that companies pay significant local taxes.
So yes, if you ignore all other benefits companies bring to the region, ignore the purpose and benefits of those breaks, ignore the comment you're replying to, and ignore that most companies using these tax breaks don't fit your claims, then yes, you can be correct for goalpost moving post selected cherry picking. Congrats.
Why should anyone have sympathy for a system that tries to take away your freedom by force if you don’t submit to it.
Stop paying your taxes for a moment, even a small amount say $2000 and witness how much expense the system is willing to spend to try and claw back that tiny amount from the individual.
The people enacting these systems don’t even “pay their share”, yet they’ll be the first to try and make you angry at others while taking profit from hours of your labor daily.
You were this close to getting it. The system will move heaven and Earth to get $2k from a random joe blow but will let a corporation just "sudo pay no taxes" and get out from paying BILLIONS.
Why would they be honest with you? The system always benefits the rich, since the beginning of time. Americans tell themselves a lot of lies about how low taxes mean freedom, when it just means we are getting screwed harder by the ultra-wealthy.
I think it is about preventing others to retain those $2000, I guess spending money to go after one serves in order to save money to go after 100 at a later stage?
