Not based on what the article says. If the factory never would have been built in the first place, the taxes never would have been paid.
Before: 0 jobs, $0 taxes (factory doesn't exist)
After: 13,000 jobs, $100M taxes (down from $300M if no tax concessions were given, as per article)
The incentives would cost the state about $200 million a year but Foxconn's payroll in Wisconsin could reach $700 million a year, Walker's office said.
Also the $3B is the cost over a decade, not in a single year.
> If the factory never would have been built in the first place, the taxes never would have been paid.
That does not make the incentives any difference than a cash payment in exchange for building the factory.
> The incentives would cost the state about $200 million a year but Foxconn's payroll in Wisconsin could reach $700 million a year, Walker's office said
The relationship between “would” and “could” in that sentence is quite important.
> That does not make the incentives any difference than a cash payment in exchange for building the factory.
Sure it does. A state writing a check for, say $100 million dollars requires spending $100 million dollars (possibly borrowing it to do so). Giving $100 million dollars in tax reductions requires spending $0. The former may not be feasible, while the latter generally is, so the two are not equivalent.
Giving $100 million in tax incentives, conditioned on a specific act, requires just as much spending (or more, if the income from the cash payment itself would have been taxable) as giving a $100 million cash payment, with the same conditions, with no special tax treatment.
That people can fail to see this may explain why these deals are politically popular, though.
Before: 0 jobs, $0 taxes (factory doesn't exist)
After: 13,000 jobs, $100M taxes (down from $300M if no tax concessions were given, as per article)
The incentives would cost the state about $200 million a year but Foxconn's payroll in Wisconsin could reach $700 million a year, Walker's office said.
Also the $3B is the cost over a decade, not in a single year.