Comcast Nabs Huge Oregon Tax Break Thanks To Loophole Intended For Google Fiber
from the unintended-consequences dept
For a few years now, the city of Portland and the state of Oregon have been jumping through hoops to try and make Portland as attractive as possible for Google Fiber. That has involved rewriting city ordinances so that Google can place its utility cabinets along public rights of way, something previously banned in the city.But the state of Oregon also notably reworked state tax law to provide Google with significant tax breaks. But the effort turned into a comedy of errors after initial rewrites technically disqualified Google Fiber (the revision said companies only qualified for tax breaks if they offered broadband speeds of at least 1 Gbps, while Google offers speeds "up to" 1 Gbps). But after several years of back and forth, the state this week moved to finalize the changes and craft a special Google Fiber loophole:
"An unusual Oregon tax may be the major factor that delayed the company's Portland rollout. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that cable TV and Internet companies are subject to "central assessment," a rare practice dating to the 19th Century that levies property taxes based partly on the value of certain companies' brands. Applying the tax to Google would have added millions of dollars – perhaps tens of millions of dollars – to its annual operating costs, and the company threatened to drop its Portland plans if Oregon lawmakers didn't exempt it from the tax."But while Google Fiber has yet to even start construction, Comcast has already rushed in to nab the tax incentives. You see, Comcast offers something it calls "Gigabit Pro," a two gigabit per second service it has been offering to select areas since last year. The service promises 2 Gbps fiber to housing developments and other easy-to-wire locations, though the availability of the offering has been murkily defined at best. It's also aggressively expensive: in contrast to Google's $70 1 Gbps offering, Comcast's Gigabit Pro costs $300 a month, plus $1000 in installation and activation fees (and a $1000 ETF for good measure).
Ironically, Comcast has been trying to get out of paying Oregon's central assessment tax for years, only to be defeated before the Oregon Supreme Court in 2014. But thanks to the city and state tripping over themselves to please Google Fiber, Comcast gets a major tax break while the state takes a notable income hit:
"If the application is approved, schools, libraries and local governments across the state would receive significantly less revenue," wrote Mary Beth Henry, director of Portland's Office of Community Technology, in a letter to state regulators. "This application was not the kind anticipated by the Legislature."Comcast, in other words, is now enjoying rich new tax breaks despite offering a service four times more expensive than Google Fiber -- which few people in Oregon will actually be able to afford. And while few people actually like Comcast or its business practices, it's hard to fully fault the company for simply taking advantage of law rewrites the state of Oregon apparently didn't fully think through.
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Filed Under: broadband, competition, fiber, oregon, tax breaks
Companies: comcast, google
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End corporate welfare, then we can talk about ending business taxation - not before.
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You may do better by passing a law making it illegal for diseases to infect living things. "Shaking down the herd" defines civilization for that well connected minority. We've improved on that predator vs. prey equation. Wildebeast herds don't need to worry about wildebeasts; only lions. In contrast, we do need to worry about predatory humans, and lions.
This whole "pass a law making Google GBit easier" is lipstick on a pig. This mess was destined to happen.
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Fair tax breaks for everyone is fair but there should be a maximum price associated with those tax breaks. The whole point should be to encourage companies to make these services more affordable to consumers. If the companies take a hit on their profits by employing bottom up pricing, in opposed to top down pricing, they get a tax break. If they purely base their prices on profit maximization they pay the full tax because the public isn't getting anything in return when prices are based solely on profit maximization.
So this is an example of poorly written laws. I doubt politicians are this stupid (though they are good at pretending to be), there was probably some back door dealings that contributed to these laws being written the way they were.
And a second thing to note is the extent that Comcast may have had prior tax breaks and government subsidies to build their network. If they had that might disqualify them from new tax breaks as they already had their chance and were given an unlevel first mover advantage playing field because of it. Now it's someone else's turn to get tax breaks, Comcast already took their tax breaks.
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What a surpirse
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This tax break will go to good use -- JOBS
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Re: This tax break will go to good use -- JOBS
Next promotional slogan:
Comcast (tm): striving to retain first place as most hated company in America.
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Actually happy for Comcast
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Some of the more fotunate areas are served by Comcast, AND by Frontier (formerly Verizon) Fios.
The apartments I am at are served by Century Link and Comcast. ... and Century Link does NOT offer broadband to this location. Google fiber has not hinted at coming around. And it's not even like I'm in some 'rural' part of Portland, either.
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How does that work again?
Depending on how you define 'value', I'd think that Comcast wouldn't be getting a tax break from such a law, but a hefty tax increase. Even when it's not taking first place in 'Most hated company in the US', it's always a strong contender, so I'd think that the 'brand value' would be pretty bad when it comes to all things Comcast.
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Good on Comcast for screwing the stupid government solid. They earned it.
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Why should we treat Google any different from other large corporation? Is it just because they are Google?
Not only did we gave General Motors $50 billion in bailout money, we also quietly gave them an additional $45 billion tax break. As a result, in 2011, GM's effective tax rate was negative 1.5%. The IRS paid GM $110 million in 2011. And that tax break continues for a period of 20 years.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/18/what-gm-bailout-really-cost-american-taxpayers.html
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but your double standards here are nothing new and something we have all gotten very used to by now.
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Actually, I am very much against all of it, especially when it's not done on the basis of accomplishments and milestones, and rather on vague promises and low expectations. I don't think any of it's right, but if the rules are applied evenly, it's a political choice rather than a crime.
What I object to on this story is that someone tried to write a law SPECIFICALLY to give a single company a boat load of cash and special exemptions to rules that even those evil, nasty, horrible existing ISPs wouldn't have. MOre, they are giving it to one of the world's single biggest companies with some of the fattest profits possible. They don't need the money.
" Like when ISPs receive tax breaks, subsides, and regional monopolies to upgrade their network and when it's all said and done their service is way way overpriced (especially when compared to other countries). "
When Americans stop thinking that everyone in every podunk burb should have equal access, then the insane subsidies will stop. American is too large and has huge areas of very low population density. Serving them isn't worth doing - which is why you don't see Google fiber lining up to provide service to rural Montana or even the suburban sprawl of a city. They want the meaty core with the most users per square mile and the least costs.
The government handouts stop the moment you stop trying to have "no backwoods shack dweller left behind" when it comes to internet service.
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So then, would it then be safe to assume that you're against tax breaks for other multi-billion dollar companies? I'm guessing 'no' based upon your second comment where you seem to be showing support for Comcast getting the tax break instead but I figured I'd have you clear it up so that there's no possible confusion regarding your stance on the matter.
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I've already witnessed three new apartment/condo developments within blocks of my suburban office offering Gigabit service from Fibersphere, though I would like to see it spread to existing single family developments as well. This appears to be somewhat of an improvement in competition for the area, and Google still has yet to make up its mind on whether they will build Google Fiber in Portland (they have submitted applications for fiber huts and started hiring though, according to rumor).
I honestly don't mind it applying to Comcast as well if it results in more Gigabit service availability in the area. Under central assessment, the property tax Comcast pays in Oregon has been 3.5 times higher than the average state. There is no Oregon sales tax and both income and property tax is higher than average to make up for that.
Also some more detail on the terms of the Gigabit excemption from OregonLive (the online version of The Oregonian newspaper):The central assessment excemption was also extended to data centers to encourage Apple and Amazon to expand their operations in Oregon.
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Level Playing Field
But tax incentive's done below a state level should be prohibited. Most cities lack the legal resource's or level of leadership to negotiate against a large corporate legal department.
The County i live in negotiated a large tax break with a fortune 500 company in an effort to create jobs. But the agreement contains no actual job creation requirements, just goals. And as it currently stands, the county is bankrolling the companies payroll in full for 20 years.
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