[CPEO-BIF] Business incentives in Michigan

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Do incentives work? Let’s find out

Editorial Board
Port Huron Times Herald (MI)
October 5, 2018

The next time a political candidate trickles down the theory that lowering taxes on businesses would create more jobs in Michigan, consider this: Taxes on businesses contribute 4 percent of the state’s budget. The state spends 4 percent of its budget on business incentives. Collectively, businesses don’t pay taxes in Michigan.

Oh, they all pay taxes. But it gets redistributed to the new kind of entrepreneurs who don’t build things but are very good at applying for grants, no-interest loans, tax breaks, job-creation incentives, brownfield relief and the endless litany of handouts that state and local government officials and developers are addicted to.

Michigan is winning the incentives war, if the amount of our tax dollars given away is the measure of success. You’ve heard the boast that we won the company that was looking at Ohio or Kentucky or some other place? Michigan already gives away more than those other states. And despite Gov. Rick Snyder’s pre-election vow to cut back on corporate welfare, it has increased 16 percent since 1990. Think of the totals if Michigan had won Foxconn or Amazon’s headquarters.

…

For the entire editorial, see
https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/opinion/editorials/2018/10/05/incentives-work-find/38063883/

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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