The fiscal trade
What tax revenue is being traded away, for how long, and what the paper trail says.
Partial
- the incentive instruments are on the record, but the accounting is not — no auditor's abatement report and no exemption ledger says what the trade cost
A fiscal trade is normally decided before it is studied, because the body that approves an abatement votes on a schedule the analysis never has to meet. This chapter shows the shape of the analysis a real study would carry. Each of the four questions below waits on a specific public record, and this study reports only the ones produced into it.
- What tax revenue is abated, and at what percentage? [open]
- Answered by the enterprise-zone / CRA agreement.
- What does the school district forgo, and was it compensated? [open]
- Answered by the school-board resolution and any compensation agreement.
- What payment-in-lieu schedule replaces the abated tax, if any? [open]
- Answered by the PILOT schedule in the agreement.
- When does the community break even on the trade? [open]
- Answered by the county auditor's annual abatement report.
- Disclosed investment: $1.0B — the operator's own figure, carried into the incentive instruments as a recital. Those instruments ARE on the record; what is not is the accounting that would price what the trade cost the taxing bodies.