Texas Tempts Tesla With Tax Breaks

If you happen to find yourself running a section of this country and would like an automaker to build a factory there, we’ve got a couple of tips to help improve your odds. It might be unfair to call them tips, however, as they’re common knowledge and realistically the only way to get a business to settle on your land. Step One involves promising as much money and as little regulation as possible. Step Two involves waiting for their response.

Hoping to beat out Oklahoma as the home of Tesla’s Cybertruck, Texas is attempting to dazzle the electric automaker with the tax breaks it knew the company wanted. All the automaker has to do is spend over a billion dollars to build its facility in Travis County.

According to Reuters, county commissioners have voted in favor of providing Tesla with a tax rebate worth at least $14.7 million. That’s thrown on top of the $50 million incentive approved by Del Valle school district last Thursday.

From Reuters:

Tesla has asked Travis County for an 80 [percent] rebate on its property taxes for 10 years, worth $14.7 million, as well as a 65 [percent] rebate for the next 10 years after that.

Tesla said the factory would create 5,000 jobs, mostly low-skilled. The average annual salary would be roughly $47,000, an income considered low by the county’s health and human services division.

Tesla is eager to distance itself from California after CEO Elon Musk defied local officials during lockdown measures aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, suggesting the county’s protocols were beyond the pale. Musk wanted to keep the factory open with employees having the option to stay home if they wished (without repercussions or pay). He has also called shelter-in-place orders “de facto house arrest” and accused California of using the pandemic to promote tyranny.

But he ultimately acquiesced to a temporary closure after butting heads with local officials, vowing to get out of California. “The unelected & ignorant ‘Interim Health Officer’ of Alameda [County] is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense,” Musk tweeted in May. “Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately.”

Oklahoma has also been added to Musk’s shortlist of possible locales in which to build a $1-billion factory focused on Model Y and Cybertruck assembly. However, it will take quite a while for the business to totally decouple from California, as the Fremont facility is currently essential for its business. Tesla would evaporate without it humming along on a daily basis — giving us another hint as to why Elon was so pissed about the lockdown orders.

[Image: Tesla]