The fiscal trade
What tax revenue is being traded away, for how long, and what the paper trail says.
Gap
- no fiscal accounting and no incentive instrument is on the record
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 announcement, not an instrument; the abatement agreement that would price the trade is not on the record.