One of the biggest arguments against offering Twitter a tax break for staying in San Francisco and (hopefully) injecting some life in to mid-Market is the precedent it would set for other companies to screw the city out of some much needed revenue. Sure enough, before the Supervisors have even had a chance to vote on the mid-Market tax break, Zynga - the people responsible for flooding your facebook news feed with updates about the status of your estranged high school friend's imaginary farm - want to get in on the tax break action.

According to the Examiner, after Twitter expressed their intent to stay in town if they get the six-year reprieve from the payroll tax, Ed Lee and his sidekick from the Board of Supes met with officials at Zynga to persuade them to stick around as well. Zynga recently signed a lease on 270,000 square feet of office space on Townsend Street, so they won't be able to move to Market street for the tax breaks, but that's apparently not stopping them from threatening to leave the city entirely. With Zynga likely going public soon, the payroll tax on stock options could "essentially double their rent," according to the Mayor's head of Economic and Workforce Development. Absent from these arguments though, is the fact that once you're eyeballing 270,000 square feet of office space, you're not really much of a startup anymore. Anyway, we give it another week or so before Yelp gives Ed Lee 1 star for poor service and starts threatening to bounce to some peninsula office park.

Previously on SFist: Twitter Intends to Stick Around (Assuming That Tax Break Goes Through)
[SFExaminer]