Now Amazon is Nixing a Seattle extension, too

Last year, Seattle's city council abolished a tax on large employers less than a month after approving the legislation to raise funds to support homeless programs. The rapid reversal came after Amazon, which employs around 45,000 people in the city, stopped building a new building and threatened not to occupy space it had rented in the planned Rainier Square tower because of the treasure. Now Amazon says it will not move into the Rainier Square tower.

"We always consider our room requirements and intend to disclose Rainier Square based on current plans," an Amazon spokesman said in a statement. "We have more than 9,000 open roles in Seattle and will continue to evaluate future growth."

The company rented 722,000 square feet, enough for between 3,500 and 5,000 people, according to The Seattle Times in The Still-substantiated Rainier Square Tower in Autumn 201[ads1]7.

The announcement follows the Amazon's decision not to open one New headquarters in New York City after repaying over $ 3 billion in tax cuts and other incentives the company expected to receive from government and local governments. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has appealed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to reconsider, New York Times reported Thursday.

In Seattle, members of the city council last year initially proposed a "main tax" of approx. $ 500 per employee on companies with annual income in the city of $ 20 million or more. Amazon would have to pay around $ 22.5 million a year for its 45,000 employees. The tax would have changed to a 0.7 percent payroll tax in 2021. After Amazon stopped construction on its new building and threatened to surrender Rainier Square, the city council adopted a compromise that cut the main tax in half and completely deducted the pay tax idea. The city expected the revised tax to raise $ 47 million a year for homeless services and affordable housing construction.

After the compromise, Amazon announced that it would resume the construction of the new building, but did not undertake to occupy Rainier Square. At that time, an Amazon spokesman said the company was "disappointed" by the Council's decision and was "very concerned about the future created by the Council's hostile approach and rhetoric to larger corporations."

Less than a month later, facing a ballot paper to counteract the tax, the city council voted to abolish it.

Tensions between Amazon and Seattle were already growing before the main tax. When Amazon announced its plans to open a second headquarters outside of Seattle, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, nominee Heather Redman, said it would be a wake-up call for the city to change its attitude toward the company.

But Amazon's critics see the company's decision not to occupy Rainier Square as evidence that there is no point in agreeing to their claims. "Last year, @Amazon threatened to weaken growth to bully Seattle from taxing big biz to fund social housing," councilor Kshama Sawant, a member of the socialist alternative, tweeted . "Now they do the threats despite Dem politicians (shameful) lifting the Amazon tax. It's clear that caving for corporate threats doesn't work."

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