AOC blew Amazon out of New York in 2019 over tax breaks but demanded one for herself in 2012
Interesting article from the Washington Examiner.
Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who regularly lambastes Republicans over tax cuts and helped scuttle a plan by Amazon to locate in New York City because she opposed tax breaks the company might receive, costing the city an estimated 25,000 jobs, sought a tax break for herself in 2012 so she could launch her own company.
Ocasio-Cortez, who graduated from Boston University in 2011, today calls herself a "democratic socialist." But in 2012, she was a businesswoman seeking tax benefits for her startup, Brook Avenue Press, which published books and curricula for children in the Bronx.
"Plenty of entrepreneurs have started their businesses on a shoestring and any break they receive means more flexibility for further growth,” Ocasio-Cortez said in 2012 in a news release.
"A tax break could mean part-time work for someone else or keeping a business' doors open long enough to turn a profit. Young entrepreneurs are playing a special role in developing promising, creative enterprises for our future, and a small break can open up their resources for hiring, creating a new product, or reinvesting in the local economy," Ocasio-Cortez added.
Ocasio-Cortez was one of several Bronx-based entrepreneurs and start-up advocates quoted in the release, put out by Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in support for the proposed Small Business Start-up Support Act. The bill would have increased deductions for start-up costs from $5,000 to $10,000.
Tax experts were surprised to hear Ocasio-Cortez supported tax breaks to fuel economic growth while considering herself a democratic socialist.
Steve Horwitz, a distinguished professor of free enterprise at Ball State University and senior affiliated scholar at the Mercatus Center, said Ocasio-Cortez’s instincts were right at the time to support tax breaks but wrong to only want them for a special class of small businesses.
“Why should anyone be exempt from taxation if part of our obligation to others is to pay taxes and provide for the sort of services that democratic socialists think that various levels of government should provide?” said Horwitz about the small business tax break. “This is the kind of thing Amazon was asking for in Long Island.”
Horwitz added that government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers, whether it is giving Amazon special breaks or exempting small businesses from taxes larger business do not have to pay.
Ocasio-Cortez was a fierce critic of the planned Amazon headquarters in New York which would have received $1.2 billion in tax benefits if it had gone through with its original plans to put its headquarters in New York.
“Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here,” she said last fall after the move was announced.
See full article with tweets and video: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/aoc-blew-amazon-out-of-new-york-in-2019-over-tax-breaks-but-demanded-one-for-herself-in-2012