Newsday: Canon will comply with local job commitments to keep tax breaks

GaryPageau
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Long Island tabloid Newsday reports Canon U.S.A. Inc. is now and will be at the end of this year in compliance with the job commitment it made in return for 12 years of tax breaks, despite recently cutting between 100 and 150 employees at the Melville headquarters, said Daniel P. Deegan, the company’s real estate attorney.

“There has been no default here,” he said to the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency last week, referring to a January tax break deal that stipulates Canon always have a minimum of 1,081 employees, according to the Newsday report.
Canon’s Melville workforce was reduced between 9% and 14% six months after it won $7 million in additional tax breaks from the IDA, Newsday reported in July. Last year, the Japanese company had threatened to jettison its Americas headquarters on Walt Whitman Road and have its employees work from home permanently.

According to Newsday, Canon requested extra IDA assistance because a 10-year incentive package initially approved in 2007 for $35 million was set to expire. The latter tax breaks played a significant role in the company’s decision to move from Lake Success to a former pumpkin farm south of the Long Island Expressway instead of out of state.

The company noted the recent staff reductions – many in the camera and printer divisions – will tee up further hiring in its medical scanning, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and health care units, where strong sales and profits are forecast.