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Boston, Washington, and Toronto all have a lot to offer Amazon.
Boston has unparalleled universities as well as any extremely high educated workforce in a liveable urban city with great transit. Boston has the problem however of being an expensive city where wages would need to be very high to draw talent.
Washington has great schools and good transit. It's workforce is very well educated and the city a pleasant one. It does have a crime issue that may be of concern and is not a very urbane city but conversely being in Washington puts the leavers of political power right at Amazon's doorstep.
Toronto has an excellent transit, a rail/airport connection good schools, an educated workforce, and a K to 12 public education system and low crime rate that no American city can offer. It is a very urbane centre, has the world's 8th largest stock exchange, and a very multicultural, liveral, artistic, and creative city. It also has the fastest growing high tech workforce in NA. Being Canada is also one of it's strengths as well as one of it's weaknesses. It offers Canada corporate tax rate that is 40% lower than the US and the dollar and slightly lower wage "subsidy" where 50,000 Canadians can be hired for the same price as 35,000 Americans. That's a huge savings year after year, decade after decade and not just a one time taxpayer funded bribe.
The problem with Toronto is that it is in Canada and in Trump's "America first, second, and last" presidency, it may prove to be too politically unpalatable.
Good points on all cities. One issue though is the corporate tax rate is less of a concern than you stated to a company like Amazon. Amazon basically pays an average tax rate of 13% not the typical 35% Fed rate or the 26.9% S&P rate.
From what I have read and heard this move is basically centered around talent retention and hiring. Amazon needs to be assured by any city it chooses that it can graduate and retain enough workers locally to fuel their growth ambitions.
This really makes the Boston rumors carry some weight. The amount of local talent that funnels through the education system in the metro is incredible and the quality of it quite high considering the schools they are attached to. Yes a decent amount of those grads already stay in the Boston area, but an incredible amount end up elsewhere in the country and world. That is where a company like Amazon would come in and benefit greatly as a result.
Thing about Boston is that it has largely become a victim of its own success (very similar to Seattle--which is precisely why Amazon is looking elsewhere for massive expansion; it's hit a wall with large-scale growth there on a number of levels).
Boston is in a very similar position not only with labor but real estate that in central areas rival Manhattan and SF in terms of cost (for commercial and residential), which leads to higher compensation demands. This was a recent article about the Mass. economy:
"The unemployment rate in the state now stands below 4 percent. While this is good news for workers and signals a healthy state economy, employers may be facing difficulties in finding qualified workers to hire. The downside of a “hot” labor market can be shortages of available qualified workers."
That's the irony of a HQ search in this case--everyone tends to direct their attention to the "very best" tech cities, but to a large degree they're "tapped out" in a number of ways (real estate bubbles and tight labor markets are NOT good for expanding businesses).
This is why large, still-attractive/dynamic cities, with large talent pools, but aren't quite "white hot" tech markets (nor astronomically-priced), like Chicago, Atlanta and Philly, are most logical.
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