It is utterly laughable that Amazon has announced that the New York City metropolitan area is among the final potential locations for Amazon’s second headquarters.
New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo is consistently anti-business, with burdensome regulations that are tort lawyers dream, always in the top three of highest taxes in the country, a Tax Department renown for its invasiveness, and consistently threatening to raise taxes on his most successful constituents.
Mayor Bill de Blasio of NY City is practically a self-proclaimed socialist. He has stated “xxxxxxxxx”. New York City has its own set of Corporation, S Corporation, partnership, LLC, and individual taxes that is added on top of the State level taxes. Many of these taxes were originally intended to be temporary decades ago, but have never been allowed to expire. It is so expensive to operate in NY City, that virtually all viable businesses exist solely to service NYC individuals and entities that are located there. NY City is also consistently ranked as one of the worst states to do business, coupled with the highest tax burden in the nation.
It appears that the only possible reason that Amazon could be interested in NY City is that it has extraordinarily liberal/socialist executives. If that is the case, investors in Amazon may need to watch out!