<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small"><h1 style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 10px;font-family:Avenir-Black;font-weight:inherit;line-height:1.3;color:rgb(26,26,26);font-size:36px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><a href="https://nonprofitquarterly.org/corporate-subsidies-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/?mc_cid=49848b1041&mc_eid=bbb68d574b">Corporate Subsidies—The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly</a></h1><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Every day it seems, local and state officials hold a press conference to announce that a company is bringing a project to their community. Those ceremonies tout the alleged benefits of the company’s arrival: the number of jobs that will be created and the amount of money a company will invest. But what is too often missing from those announcements are the <em style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">costs</em>: how much money will the public have to pay the company in return?</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Without that vital piece of information, the rest of the discussion is just noise, for there is no way of knowing whether the per-job cost is a good investment for the community—or a lousy one.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">States and localities across the country give companies corporate tax breaks, or “incentives” as corporations and some elected officials like to call them. These tax breaks allow companies to pay little to nothing in state income, property, or sales taxes. States also woo companies using non-tax subsidies, like cash grants, workforce training, or free land, roads, and sewer lines.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">In short, corporations are exempted from paying for all the things that communities value: clean water, paved roads, well-maintained parks, public safety, and help for people in medical distress.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Such subsidies are significant. It is estimated that annually, state and local governments <a href="https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/mitchell-targeted-development-mercatus-special-study-v3.pdf" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(225,1,17);text-decoration-line:none;background-color:transparent;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">spend</a> more than $95 billion on such deals. Amazon, with profits soaring by 220 percent in the first year of the pandemic, <a href="https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/amazon-tracker" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(225,1,17);text-decoration-line:none;background-color:transparent;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">has received</a> <em style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">at least</em> $4.2 billion in public money from states and localities across the country. The company received $700 million in subsidies in 2021 alone.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Recently, my colleagues and I at <a href="https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(225,1,17);text-decoration-line:none;background-color:transparent;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">Good Jobs First</a>, a nonprofit that monitors corporate subsidy payments, released a <a href="https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/financialexposure" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(225,1,17);text-decoration-line:none;background-color:transparent;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">study, <em style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><u style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">Financial Exposure: Rating the States on Economic Development Transparency</u></em>, </a>evaluating the state of the field’s disclosure. The report represents our sixth publication on this topic, but our first since 2014.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Have things gotten better or worse? It depends where you live. Eight years ago, we found that 55 percent of examined subsidy programs provided at least company names; now, this number stands at 62 percent—a modest improvement. But that still means that in one-third of state programs, public monies are being given away with no public disclosure at all, <em style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">not even the name of the company receiving the payments</em><span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:Avenir-Black;vertical-align:baseline">. </span>Lack of transparency is a problem as these tax subsidies often come directly out of the city, state, and even school district budgets.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">The ubiquity of corporate tax subsidies puts a lie to the notion that a “free market” exists in the United States. In fact, it pays to be connected. It also pays to keep those connections secret—the less the public knows, the easier it is for politicians and government officials to funnel resources to favored corporations, and for corporations to extract cash from communities.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:18px;line-height:1.5;font-family:Avenir-Medium;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">If there is a silver lining to this, it is that communities are increasingly fighting such subsidies, resulting in policies that require online disclosure of payments made to individual companies. Sometimes elected officials to seek more information as they too can be left out of knowing which corporations are receiving public money. In Nevada, a combination of those factors pushed the state from having one of the nation’s worst disclosure ratings in 2014 to the best just eight years later.</p></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">be a kind human</font><div><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">Bonita Green</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>