LegalZoom moving to Glendale

The online company that provides legal documents had been threatening to leave L.A. because of a tax dispute. Basically, the city was offering breaks to pure Internet businesses, which the LegalZoom people thought they were entitled to. City officials disagreed, saying that the company was only entitled to a portion of the break. So LegalZoom started shopping around. Today it announced signing a 10-year lease for headquarters space in Glendale. From an earlier Business Journal story:

The company initially paid the lowest [L.A.] rate, which was designed to lure so-called multimedia companies. But two years ago, the city reclassified many such online companies, including LegalZoom, into the highest bracket, reserved for law firms and other professional service companies. The reclassification quintupled LegalZoom's city tax bill. Under the multimedia category, businesses pay $1.01 for each $1,000 in gross receipts. But under the professional services category, they pay $5.07. That means a reclassified business with $100 million in revenue that would be exposed to the tax saw its annual bill soar from $101,000 to $507,000.