Tax incentives have been a hot button issue here in Austin for as long as I remember and I've heard all the arguments pro and con. It typically doesn't take long for these arguments to veer off in all sorts of directions for the simple reason that taxes affect each and everyone one of us in our everyday lives.
In my opinion it is OK to root around in the minutia and beat all the side issues to death, as long as you get the big picture right to begin with. Which we don't.
[1] Companies and people move away from high tax areas and gravitate towards low tax areas. Despite a mountain of statistical evidence to back this up Liberals still don't believe this is true. The reason Liberals don't believe all these statistics are true is because they belong to a cult. When you refuse to believe irrefutable evidence you belong to a cult.
[2] When a company or a person earns a dollar it is their dollar. It is not the city's dollar, nor the state's dollar, nor the federal government's dollar. It is their dollar, and government entities penalize them for earning it by taking away a portion of that dollar. Taxes are therefore a negative event, a penalty, an encumbrance. Regardless of your own personal view of using taxes to build roads, libraries and schools it doesn't not take away from the initial action of taking something away. It is a negative event and we fought a Civil War over it.
[3] Cities that promise tax incentives to companies are removing this negative event. They are not handing them a check or a suitcase filled with cash. They simply are promising to not act in a negative manner. To take this idea to the extreme suppose a company was tied to the whipping post once a month and flogged by the city manager. As an incentive the city manager may decide to not tie a company to the whipping post at all, thereby removing this negative event.