Pending the outcome of a new Seattle City Council initiative that would raise taxes on large businesses, Amazon.com Inc. (Seattle) has suspended its plans to expand in its headquarter city. The new taxes, aimed to combat the city’s growing homelessness, would mean a total of $75 million in taxes coming from the its largest employers.
The proposal puts Amazon’s plans to expand its number of local employees – from more than 40,000 to roughly 7000 additional, which would be housed in a new 17-storey office building it had been planning to build – on hold, reports Fortune.
Amazon’s political statement in threatening to pull the expansion has been met with criticism due to its CEO Jeff Bezos’ – the world’s richest man – vast fortune. Recently a sharp rise in Amazon shares made the CEO $12 billion richer in one day. In stark contrast, the rate of death among Seattle’s homeless rose by 32 percent (169 deaths) last year from 2016. The Seattle Chamber of Commerce, however, whose members include Amazon and other Seattle-based industry giants like Microsoft and Boeing, support the opposition to higher corporate taxes.