Jake: Corporate tax breaks grow the infrastructure, ‘which is good for everybody’

A recent column from The Seattle Times claimed Microsoft is receiving the largest state corporate tax break identified in the newspaper’s records, driven largely by 100% bonus depreciation — a federal provision that lets companies deduct the full cost of major investments in the year they’re made rather than spreading the deduction over several years.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July 2025, made 100% bonus depreciation permanent after it had been phasing out under prior law. Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy senior fellow Matthew Gardner described the scale of Microsoft’s break as more than triple the previous record for a single company.

KIRO host Jake Skorheim believes these corporate tax breaks benefit both the economy and the community.

“If the company is making investments to grow, it increases employees. It’s growing the infrastructure, which is good for everybody. Then it makes sense that you’d be able to write off some of those costs,” Jake said on “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “Microsoft, for instance, is going to spend $190 billion this year on growing their business. Microsoft cannot exist without people to work those jobs. That’s good for you and me. The 53,000 Microsoft employees that collectively, on average, make $230,000, they buy homes and groceries and cars and all the different things that we love.”

KIRO host Spike O’Neill said the comparison that matters to him isn’t whether Microsoft benefits from the deduction, but whether a company posting record profits needs it.

“They’re also raking in record profits at a time they’ve never paid less money in taxes,” Spike countered. “This isn’t hard times for these guys that they need breaks from the government to stay alive and keep going forward.”

Jake pointed to a separate, older tax break to argue for consistency in how the issue gets covered. In 2009, amid the Great Recession, Washington lawmakers lowered the business and occupation tax rate for newspaper publishers, including The Seattle Times, from 0.484% to a preferential rate. In 2023, the legislature went further, eliminating the B&O tax entirely for qualifying newspaper and digital news publishers from January 1, 2024 through January 1, 2034.

“In 2009, The Seattle Times and other for-profit newspapers sought legislation that would lower their B&O tax rate,” Jake said. “They got that. Other companies did not. Is that fair?”

“Big players get big rewards,” Spike said. “It’s exploiting the laws and the rules … I wasn’t crazy about it then. It’s one thing when you’re trying to fight your way through an economic recession. It’s another thing when Microsoft and Amazon are showing record profits.”

Jake argued the same standard should extend to the newspaper’s current exemption, which runs a full decade rather than applying only during a downturn.

“The Seattle Times was able to get a 100% B&O tax exemption in Washington, from 2024 through 2034,” Jake said. “Is that fair, given your logic?”

“Probably not, based on … but there are a lot of factors that you and I probably aren’t privy to on this,” Spike said. “If they’re the only privately owned newspaper in town, if you’re the paper of record, it probably behooves local government to keep you in business.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3