Raise the county tax rate. A small increase would be invisible to the rates Disney charges customers.
Time for the Mouse to fight back, and hard. I like the “Donate millions to just Democrats in Florida” idea floated above. I like the “Close down and lay everybody off” idea better.
Neither will happen.
There are people in those counties that have nothing at all to do with Disney, but they will be forced to foot the bill for its infrastructure.
Nothing stopping them from raising the sales tax. Disney should be paying it’s fair share to the community instead of getting tax breaks.
As the number one employer in the state, I would say they have always added something to the community.
The tourism money Disney brings in is a substantial part of why Floridians pay no state income tax.
Right, they will raise the sales tax on all the residents, not just those at Disney.
That’s what it was doing. It paid for all the infrastructure and maintenance out of its own funds. Now, they can’t, since that was pretty much the entire point of the special tax district, the state and county will have to pay for it instead. Unless they decide to create a bill of attainder to increase Disney’s taxes over that of other businesses in the county, those other businesses and their customers will be on the hook for that.
Special tax districts are not really anything special, despite the name. They are a pretty common way for businesses in an unincorporated area to band together and pay for infrastructure improvements. Getting rid of Disney’s special tax district isn’t giving it a tax break, it is in fact, making the state and county taxpayers pay for the things that it used to pay for itself.
That would be Walmart. >100,000 employees in Florida.
~Max
Eh, not by all that much, ~80k vs ~100k.
I’d say they are still a pretty significant contributor to the community.
Disney is the top employer in central Florida. You know, the community that we are talking about right now in the previous posts. Nit pick acknowledged, but doesn’t change the point one iota.
Yeah, just a nitpick.
~Max
Do you have a cite for this? I’ve never heard of anything like it before.
Corporations are people with freedom of speech, unless they speak in a way that conservatives don’t like. Apparently.
The GOP has been working on the premise that whatever unethical or illegal thing the GOP is doing, the Dems must also be doing.
I suspect then, that in a basement under a Republican sponsor owned Pizza parlor, we are gonna find some nasty stuff going on.
Yep.
You have it backwards. The GOP made it clear that Disney had to pay for it’s deal, in political donations, etc. The GOP then decided to embark on a bigoted homophobic platform, which Disney can not support, thus Disney is cutting off the donation spigot. The GOP is angry that it’s bigotry it going to hit them in the pocketbook, so they are retaliating.
They already do and have done.
It wasn’t the Black Panthers so much, as the State realized it had a little used loophole in it’s laws. The BP discovered this loophole and used it for a political protest. If the KKK had done the same thing, the law also would have been changed.
Hardly. Disney took worthless swampy land and turned it into something that brings billions of dollars into Florida, not only in tourism, but also taxes. It benefited Florida more than Disney. Note that Universal Studios then opened it’s theme park also, due to WDW.
They do, and more. Sales in WDW do pay State sales tax.
Yep.
This is gonna cost the taxpayers a LOT:
For Florida: The biggest issue is nearly $1 billion in tax-free bonds that have been issued by Disney. Florida law says that if a special tax district is dissolved, the responsibility to pay those bonds reverts to local governments. Democratic state lawmakers say that the interest on those bonds equates to an additional tax burden of $580 per person for the 1.7 million residents of neighboring Orange and Osceola counties, which would also have to step in and provide many of the public services for the area that are currently funded by the company. Disney employs about 80,000 people in Florida.
Both blue counties, so all good.
~Max
I think it’s fairly well established that, regardless of how much a government official might have a right to do a thing, that’s irrelevant if the official was abusing that right.
A city has no duty, for example, to give its streets over for a political demonstration. But, having chosen to do so, if it grants permission to a group and then - later - decides to revoke that permission because the group said that it believed that yellow people were better than red people, the demonstrators would have a valid first amendment argument and they would probably win.
Disney would need to demonstrate that this was a retaliatory measure but, I suspect, that’s easy enough to do with minimal discovery. Quite possibly, there’s already sufficient public information already to make a case.
I guess we’re gonna lose a lot of participants on this subforum when the IRS gets around to issuing refund checks this year.
Not if they did so because of your speech, and essentially admit as such. That what appears to be going on here. The fig leaf explanation would need to be believed by jury.
Also, you do realize you’re arguing freedom of speech doesn’t exist in the US, right? That seems at odds with positions you’ve taken before.
No kidding. It’s my guess that Magiver is using a dictionary that was written by someone who doesn’t speak English.
You have it backwards. The burden is on Disney to prove the legislature’s action is retaliation for protected speech, which is easier said than done.
Uh, no.
~Max