They moved because Seattle and the State tried something very similar to what is happening now. They bumped the taxes on corporations of "a certain size" IE BOEING! Threatened to continue the trend and knew that with the infrastructure already in place, Boeing was "trapped" in Seattle. Well, NOT SO. Why did Amazon start looking for "Headquarters II and III?" Hmmm guesses anyone? YUP! The city and county started eyeing corporate taxes which would apply to, well, first companies with over "X" number of employees (Microsoft and Amazon) and then companies with over "X" amount of gross income (Microsoft and Amazon again). The employee count was so unpopular that they overturned it unanimously only 2 weeks after it passed ... UNANIMOUSLY! We shall see about the additional gross income tax on companies over a certain size as it is only now just now being publicly discussed.
Thanks for the background info. It doesn’t surprise me one bit. Do you think this was the beginning of Seattle’s downfall?