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AT&T giving $1000 bonus to all its employees because of tax reform
- yequalsx 9y agoThe cynic in me says that this is AT&T paying $200 million to garner goodwill for their takeover of Time Warner. The announcement is a boon for the President and I do not doubt that pressure will be applied to the Department of Justice to go easy on its takeover bid. It's a small price to pay to ensure a smoother process.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoIn terms of garnering goodwill with the President, I think the real sticking point is CNN.
- anilr 9y agoA $1000 bonus is a wonderful x-mas gift. Why would a company attribute the gift to the government instead of simply saying "We're AT&T. We're awesome. Here's $1000" unless there was motivation to do so? Unless you can answer that question you should be cynical.
- mratzloff 9y agoYou nailed it.
- saboot 9y agoTrump just praised the AT&T announcement in front of the white house, looks to be working already!
- walshemj 9y agoGiving a grand to Linemen (Engineers) isn't going to help that.
- yequalsx 9y agoYes, giving $1000 to a low level employee isn't going to help. Giving $200 million to low level employees and saying, "It's because of this great tax bill that the President championed", is going to help. It soothes his ego and induces him to reward the soother. That's how I think Trump's psychology works.
- walshemj 9y agoCWA members aint that dumb
- yequalsx 9y agoI'm not talking about the CWA's reaction to this. I'm talking about Trump's reaction and what he might pressure the Attorney General to do. I think both of those men are highly corrupt and without scruples. To me it is clear that this bonus, the timing of the announcement, are clearly meant to give Trump an ego boost so that he does a quid pro quo with AT&T. I could be wrong.
- rco8786 9y agoWhy not $1,000 raise?
- canadian_voter 9y agoOne time quarterly hit vs ongoing expense. Same amount of good press, but much cheaper.
- doubt_me 9y agopropaganda 1k isn't shit for a family anymore. 1 bill and its gone
- protomyth 9y agoThat's one big bill (or more likely a lot of smaller bills) I can coast on. A $1,000 would be mighty nice right now.
- reaperducer 9y agoDid you send back the $1,200 check that George Bush sent everyone during his administration, or are you too young to remember the impact that had on the country?
- jitl 9y agoWikipedia claims 3.5% spending increase. What do you see as the effect on the recession?
- rayiner 9y ago> Once tax reform is signed into law, AT&T* plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T U.S. employees — all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers. If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays. If you wonder why the tech industry seemingly has little political influence, despite having all the money, this is the reason. Money isn't the currency of politics, its jobs. AT&T and Alphabet spent about the same on lobbying last year (about $16 million). But AT&T can call up a red state or swing state Congressperson and say: "this issue is really important to us, and by the way, we've got 5,000 unionized workers in your district." Alphabet can't do that.
- guelo 9y agoWhy would Alphabet lobby against a corporate tax cut? I don't think they did. This has nothing to do with the right wing cause-celebre of painting Google as an evil liberal company.
- sova 9y agoI believe the commenter is merely stating that if a workforce is located in a voting district there is more political sway than if a bulk of the workforce, although technologically savvy and effectual, does not live in districts where congresspeople are listening. The "power of your constituents" (and where they reside)
- didhshz 9y agoAT&T is not tech but Alphabet is? I often wonder what HN means by technology and engineering. It seems to mean websites and the backend to support it. Sure it’s “complicated” and multi layered but so is “finnegan’s wake” For me technology means micro-fabrication bridges, substations and OSes. AT&T has delivered more “tech” than any other company ever! Google’s innovations? Repackaging existing solutions and funding, yet to be launched, Moon shots. EDIT it goes without saying that AT&T is a shadow of its former self.
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- 8bitben 9y agoI have a feeling the majority of that $1000 will be taken right back in higher health care costs and lost state & local deductions.
- drawnwren 9y agoIf you're working for AT&T aren't you on corporate insurance?
- iamstephenliu 9y agoHaving corporate insurance doesn't mean employees aren't subject to paying premiums that could increase next year.
- objclxt 9y agoAlthough corporate insurance for companies the size of AT&T is generally self funded, rather than insured, so the state of the insurance market doesn’t always reflect their premiums.
- jsjohnst 9y ago> Although corporate insurance for companies the size of AT&T is generally self funded When I worked there (long time ago), that wasn’t the case, but seems you are correct now anyway. http://att.jobs/media/151345/Benefits-Overview-Management_012616.pdf http://att.jobs/media/151345/Benefits-Overview-Management_01...
- JohnTHaller 9y agoAs more healthy people opt out of health insurance due to their no longer being a penalty, it's likely overall insurance rates will increase faster. They'll apparently continue to increase as they have for over a decade regardless, we just get to speed up or slow down the increase.
- freedomben 9y ago
- dangero 9y agoCan someone explain the reasoning here when taxes don't change till next year? Edit: I think my question was not clear -- this bonus will be given in 2017 -- AT&T is not getting any tax breaks this year, so why give a special bonus this calendar year? "If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays." So during the 2017 tax year.
- awinder 9y agoProbably because AT&T has no problem fronting the cash that they'll make next year, but this lets them get a publicity bounce because it's very topical right now.
- protomyth 9y agoThey really cannot go back and change something for the previous year because of a whole host of issues. The simplest is people / businesses have already been paying this years taxes under this years rules quarterly. Its already going to be a mess for software developers to rush out changes to their payroll customers for a tax plan that goes into effect some 12 days after its passage.
- chrisBob 9y agoYou mean why they are putting it off for a whole week and a half!? I don't think anyone would get their taxes done on time if it applied retroactively to 2017, and having a different tax code for December 21-31 seems like a bad idea also. I think applying the change on January 1st is ambitious if anything.
- aggie 9y agoThe fact that the tax cuts are permanent and this is a one time bonus certainly makes it seem like a publicity stunt, possibly related to currying favor for the merger with Time Warner. That said, if you take their stated reason at face value, the tax cuts aren't directly providing the cash for the bonuses, so they can do it now based on projected savings later.
- zeep 9y agoThey are already screwing everybody over so they have the money... and they want to keep Trump.
- alphabettsy 9y agoBuying Goodwill for Time Warner merger and Net Neutrality?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mnm1 9y agoCorporate tax rates get slashed almost in half and employees get a few hundred bucks after taxes. Is this that trickle down economics I keep hearing about? I believe it is. Someone got fucked. And it wasn't AT&T.
- adventured 9y agoAlternatively you can leave the US corporate income tax rate where it is, which is the second highest effective rate in the OECD, and uncompetitive with dozens of other major economies. You can then watch a lot more massive corporations take their headquarters, R&D, white collar jobs, investment, etc. outside of the US. Particularly small & mid-size US manufacturing is at a severe disadvantage with the high US effective corporate income tax rate. US manufacturing companies pay twice the corporate income tax rate as their peers in China. That means less capital available for investing into expansion, productivity, innovation, et al. Pretending the US doesn't have to compete with the rest of the world, is an ideal recipe for economic disaster. The US should have slashed its corporate income tax rate decades ago. And it should raise the income taxes on the top 1/4 to pay for it (they get a benefit back in rising stock prices, as they're the primary stock owners in the US). You want to lure foreign capital investment and foreign corporations to US shores, you don't do that with high corporate tax rates.
- fzeroracer 9y agoThis is ignoring the fact that most companies do not actually pay the effective rate. When you take deductions and so forth into account the rate is not that far out from the average. You can't just look at one statistic in a vacuum and not look at everything related to it.
- pfranz 9y agoI've always seen "effective tax rate" to mean after the deductions have been applied. Looking at OECD data, I don't see them publishing effective tax rates--only the statutory rates (the base rate). But you are correct in that the statutory rate appears very high, but the effective rate is in line other OECD countries.
- blunte 9y agoSince publicly traded US companies often claim to be focused most on raising shareholder value, this _apparent_ generosity must be part of some long play (which ATT believes will ultimately pay for itself in stock price, tax deductions, or something).
- reaperducer 9y agoIt's probably small, but I bet there's some measurable savings in terms of employee churn. Even if you delay some of the turnover for a year because of happy employees, that's a lot of HR expense saved. I wish there was a way to find out.
- blunte 9y agoIt's actually good for the bottom line to pay employees more, up to a point. But companies like ATT aren't know (in the last 25 years) to have that kind of wisdom.
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoLaughable... they'll need something to offset the higher taxes they soon will be paying in Blue states etc. And that 1 Billion investment will probably be on equipment to throttle/slow/degrade those who cant pay the Net Neutrality Removal Premium.
- amputect 9y agoPer https://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=22150 https://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=22150 AT&T was already required to pay this out to at least 20,000 employees because of negotiations with the Communications Workers of America union.
- coolso 9y ago20,000 is a whole lot less than 200,000. EDIT: Also, those 20K you mentioned are essentially getting both. It's a totally separate bonus.
- vannevar 9y agoAnd they'll need it, because of tax reform.
- rco8786 9y agonm, math
- coolso 9y agoA rather shortsighted way to look at things. How do you know this isn't just the tip of the iceberg? How do you know that they won't use that savings to further invest in the company which in turn could create thousands of new jobs? (EDIT: I just re-read the article, and it says in addition to the bonus, they'll be investing an additional $1B in the US in 2018, and that "Every $1 billion in capital invested in the telecom industry creates about 7,000 jobs for American workers, research shows.") Also, what's with the negative outlook? I'll bet all 200K of those employees are pretty happy about that $1K bonus (on top of saving another $2K/yr in taxes, totaling an extra $3K+ in their pockets, over 10 years = $30K+). The tax bill just passed and companies are already proving the naysayers wrong, and it seems like people are just trying to find every excuse as to why it's supposedly not actually a good thing that people are going to be able to keep thousands of bucks more every year. Talk about bah humbug!
- scarface74 9y agoThat's not how things work. With the almost 0% interest rate do you really think that if AT&T found a worthwhile capital investment they wouldn't do it regardless of the tax plan?
- propman 9y ago$1,000 bonus for 250k employees is $250,000,000 first of all... Secondly, they announced a $1B increase in capital expenditures for next year so that's $1.25B. That's now 54.3% which is a great "trickle down" effect. Oh and just FYI, the average American family, married couple with 2 kids making the median American income of $60k after this tax bill will now pay $0 in taxes. Instead they will receive $70 refund. Before they'd be paying $1700 a year. So anyone that fits that demographic making less than $60k a year will get a tax refund instead of paying any federal income tax. The Bush cuts were garbage, this is a middle class tax cut.
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- omarforgotpwd 9y agoSo they're giving the bonus this year, to reduce taxes and then reaping the benefits next year. Smart.
- EADGBE 9y agoIt's like they have accountants or something.
- e15ctr0n 9y agoComcast just announced pretty much the same thing. Comcast Celebrates Tax Reform, Net Neutrality Votes With $1K Employee Bonuses, Plans $50B In Capex By 2023 | http://deadline.com/?p=1202230881 http://deadline.com/?p=1202230881 Citing “the passage of tax reform and the FCC’s action on broadband” (aka the Dec. 14 vote to repeal net neutrality), Comcast chief Brian Roberts announced $1,000 bonuses would go to more than 1,000 front-line and non-executive employees. Roberts also announced that the Company expects to spend “well in excess” of $50B over the next five years investing in infrastructure to radically improve and extend broadband plant and capacity, and its television, film and theme park offerings.
- backtoyoujim 9y agowow. instead of fiber to the curb AT&T employees can almost afford an iphone x
- lamarpye 9y agoStrange because the price is nearly the same.