or state and local governments, offering incentives for business location and retention is a well-established practice that appears to have yielded good results.All the statistical evidence suggests that these incentives do impact on location decisions. These incentives have become the major form of combat in what has been described as the “new war between the states.”  Even critics of these incentives do not call for unilateral disarmament.  Rather, they call for careful design, evaluation, and accountability, so that the incentives offered are attractive and appropriate while also being fair to established firms and other taxpayers in the state.  This paper summarizes some of the recent research and discussion around these incentives and how some of those research findings and analysis might be brought to bear on refining the tools used in industrial recruitment in South Carolina.

ECONOMIC VERSUS FISCAL IMPACT

From the economist’s perspective, the most salient fact is the significant difference between the fiscal impact of incentives and the economic impact.  The economic impact is the primary objective, i.e., the number of jobs created, the amount of capital investment, and the resulting increased flow of income to households and firms in the state. From that it is necessary to subtract the additional costs incurred to make that income and those jobs happen, but almost always there is a positive economic impact.  For a BMW, which not only creates jobs and income directly but also attracts satellite firms, the economic impact can be very large. 

Economist Timothy Bartik, who is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the subject of business incentives, cautions that there are some important qualifiers to consider in evaluating the economic impact.  First, how high are the wages? Are these good jobs?  South Carolina has taken that factor into account in designing its job tax credit.  Second, is this firm generating additional jobs and income or just displacing other jobs or attracting new workers into the area?  The emphasis in business location incentives should be to create new and/or better jobs for the locals.  Offering incentives to locate in an area of very low unemployment needs to be considered carefully, because it is likely to attract an inflow of new residents who will place demands on the infrastructure and the school system and not necessarily improve the quality of life for the existing residents.  South Carolina probably doesn’t need to attract much more industry into Greenville and Spartanburg counties, but there are areas of the state where job opportunities and better wages are desperately needed, an issue addressed later in this paper.

Even though the economic impact is the major goal, states can’t afford to neglect the fiscal impact.  Fiscal impact refers to the flow of additional tax revenues into state and local budgets minus the additional expenses incurred to service the needs of the new firm and any new satellite industries and residents it attracts.  It’s possible to have a positive economic impact, creating jobs and income, but a negative fiscal impact.  Just look at the pinnacle of all giveaways, Mercedes in Alabama, where the state has found it necessary to borrow money from its pension fund to meet its commitment and where the cost per job was something like $200,000.  Alabama suffered from the winner’s curse.  The state entered a bidding war for Mercedes that escalated to the point where the state was never going to get enough back from this victory to cover their costs.  Alabama’s experience points to that element of gambling in the industrial location game, the challenge of figuring out what package is just enough to attract a firm without giving them more than is necessary or more than our citizens are willing to pay.           

No one should think of business location incentives from a fiscal standpoint just in terms of revenue given up.  Some of that revenue would never have appeared in the first place without offering some incentives. There is almost always a higher revenue stream with the new firm than without. The real question is how that revenue compares to the cost of services and the distribution of the burden of paying for those services.  First, and most important, will this firm eventually generate enough state and local revenue in income, sales, and property taxes and various fees and charges to cover the additional cost of infrastructure and services, which ranges from worker training to road construction to sewer treatment and fire protection?  How are the costs and revenues divided between the state and the local government? Second, if the answer is no, the revenue is not enough, who pays the extra cost?  At the local level, where we still depend heavily on the property tax, will it fall on homeowners? Commercial property? Existing industrial firms? Or do we just let other services deteriorate in order to avoid raising the mil rate?           

These are important questions.  Just as policy makers have become accustomed to environmental impact statements, they need to think in terms of both economic and fiscal impact statements when designing and offering an incentive package to a firm.  South Carolina is not a beggar when it comes to attracting industry.  The state has assets—a good labor force, an excellent port, a good highway network, an attractive climate, and until recently, a lot of water.  These factors are at least as important and often more important than tax incentives in attracting firms that offer good jobs and good wages and will come to stay for a while.  In addition, South Carolina has established firms that will be competing with these new firms for the best workers and bearing a large share of the burden of paying for schools and local public services, firms that may feel that they are getting shortchanged by a state that is more interested in the new firm than the existing ones.  Not only is it necessary to attract continuously new or expanding industry to provide jobs for a growing population, but also it’s important to take good care of those firms that provide the jobs already here.

DESIGN ISSUES

There are at least three issues in designing a business location incentive structure, or redesigning it, that have received a lot of attention in the economics literature in recent years.  The first is the relative importance of tax and nontax incentives.  The second is the use of targeted or customized incentive packages versus a general structure of taxes and services that is attractive to industry.  The third is the balance of upfront and long-term incentives.           

Tax breaks are important, but so are nontax benefits.  Often the firm isn’t going to have a lot of taxable corporate income in the first few years of operation, but the property taxes and property tax breaks kick in early, so those may matter more.   There are also all kinds of things that states can and do offer.  Land acquisition.  Road construction.  Sewer service. Worker training, where South Carolina’s TEC system has been and remains ahead of the curve.  Bartik finds that these nontax incentives are pretty significant as a recruiting tool.  From a standpoint of fiscal impact, these in-kind state contributions are more attractive than tax incentives, because they tend to be largely upfront or onetime costs, whereas a tax break is the gift that goes on giving.  Industrial recruiters may have a good idea of exactly what training or what road construction a firm needs, but no one really knows how much of a tax incentive it takes to get a firm here, and budget forecasters often don’t have a really good idea of the long-term revenue impact of that incentive. 

The problem with any tax incentive, or what are sometimes called tax expenditures, is that it’s hard to measure their effectiveness.  It’s important to question whether we giving away revenue for things that people would have done anyway.  Were they already going to make their homes more energy efficient, or give generously to charity, or build a plant in Lexington County, so the tax break is just kind of a bonus?  Is our state, like Alabama, giving away the store instead of just some of the merchandise?  Because nothing that the state gives away is really free.  Any revenue foregone, any expenditure incurred means less money to spend on schools, roads, prisons, or elderly citizens on Medicaid in nursing homes.  So both tax breaks and expenditures have to be subject to the same kind of cost-benefit analysis as any other budgetary issue.  In fact, according the Corporation for Enterprise Development, more and more states are using cost-benefit tests in screening projects, particularly for the quality of jobs created.

Cost-benefit approaches lead to the second design issue, which is whether the state should offer targeted or negotiable incentives or whether the same incentive package should be available to all firms.  South Carolina has evolved a pretty good balance in this area over the last decade or so.  Counties can negotiate fee in lieu agreements, but unless the industry is really unattractive or the county can afford to be really choosy, most firms will get the same deal.  The eligibility conditions for job tax credits and other state incentives are laid out in general laws.  Most of the targeted incentives that are customized for a particular firm are on the nontax or service side, depending on what they need in the way of infrastructure, worker training, or services.  The Council for Economic Development strongly recommends such a package, where the revenue incentives are available to all firms that meet certain eligibility requirements.  Such an approach also avoids intrastate competition that pits one county against each other so that firms can play one county off against another.

Another aspect of targeting is the identification of particular parts of the state and the encouragement of firms to locate, not in the big, developed, industrial counties, but in the Williamsburgs and the Jaspers and Hamptons.  The state does vary the incentives depending on the state of development in the county, but truth be told, it’s not enough.  The incentives offered to locate in counties of high unemployment and low development are rarely adequate to offset the disadvantages these counties suffer in terms of high school millage and/or low school quality.  As long as South Carolina insists that such a large share of school funding come from local property taxes, firms are going to be reluctant to locate in a county where they are going to be the primary supporter of the public schools.  Some policy analysts have advocated that industry be taxed at a uniform statewide mill rate for school purposes and the revenue be distributed among school districts on a per pupil basis, because the industry should belong to the whole state, not just the school district in which it is located.  Industry gets workers from all over the state, so they have an interest in the whole school system. Industry receives benefits and services from the state and gets tax breaks from the state.  Industrial recruitment is a state function.  All of these are reasons why property taxes from industry should be used to fund education across the whole state, not just in their local school districts.

The third issue is the balance between upfront and long-term incentives.  One of the lessons in recent experience with corporate scandals is how short term the management focus often is.  CEOs and upper management are rewarded for the performance in terms of the stock value and the quarterly bottom line.  This approach means that long-term benefits are heavily discounted, and it’s the immediate or near term benefits that count.  Bartik suggests that under these conditions, incentives ten years down the road are largely irrelevant.  If short term is the time frame, perhaps the state should reconsider the duration of income tax breaks and fee in lieu of taxes (FILOT) agreements.  There’s little sense in giving away future tax revenue if it isn’t a significant factor in decision-making.

OTHER ISSUES

In addition to these fundamental issues in designing incentive systems, there are several other issues that arise from the use of tax incentives for business location and relocation.  Two of these are South Carolina specific, while the third offers lessons learned from other states.  The first issue relates to the various kinds of governments involved and affected, including not just the state but school districts, counties, and to a lesser degree, municipalities.  The second issue is the impact of the fee in lieu agreements on the distribution of the property tax burden in South Carolina.  The third issue is performance contracting and accountability.

First is the question of who’s in charge here?  At one time most incentive agreements were state affairs.  But in the 1990s the power to negotiate fee in lieu agreements was delegated to county councils. There are certainly advantages to having these negotiations take place at the county level, because that’s where a lot of the services will be supplied and that’s where the property tax revenue is impacted.  But this procedure enhances the intercounty competition, where counties that already have a strong industrial tax base have lower mill rates to begin with and can thus offer lower fee in lieu arrangements.  Furthermore, county governments are only one player in this drama.  Municipalities are sometimes involved, more often as service providers, sometimes as tax collectors if the industry falls within their boundaries.  But the largest revenue interest belongs to the absent party at the table, the school district, which has the largest chunk of revenue in play and will be most heavily impacted if new industry leads to new residents and new housing developments generating demand for new classrooms and new teachers.  That lesson came home in the battle over including schools in TIF¹ districts.  It was learned again in the battle over the multi-county business park agreement in Horry County.  Somehow the state has to find a way to ensure that the interests of schools are represented while still speaking with a single authoritative voice at the local level.

Second is the unraveling of Act 208, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just something to think about.  The present assessment rates were embedded in the constitution in the mid-1970s in Act 208 at 4% for family farms and owner occupied residences, 6% for commercial, rental and commercial agricultural property, 10.5% for industrial and personal property, 9.5% for some special classes of business property, and a few other special cases, like the farm and forest use value.  That constitutional provision determined a certain distribution of the property tax burden that held into the 1990s.  Then came the relief for homeowner school taxes, FILOT agreements, and most recently, the reduction in the assessment rate on cars. 

With FILOTs mostly at the equivalent of 6% assessment and sometimes 4%, and cars ratcheting down to 6% assessment, South Carolina is moving very rapidly toward having two rates instead of four for assessment purposes, 4% and 6%.  That’s not necessarily bad, but it leaves a lot of older industrial property and business personal property up there in the increasingly rare 10.5% category.  There would be a real jolt if the state jumped to 4% and 6% for all classes of property right now, because most local governments would have to ratchet up mill rates and a lot of the property tax burden would shift to homeowners.  But it may be an image of the revenue system to hold out as something that is desirable and toward which the state is intentionally moving.  Certainly it would be more feasible if the state picked up a larger share of the cost of education, because school millage is about 60% of the total local property tax.

Finally, there is that huge issue that is sometimes known by the nice name of accountability and sometimes known by the nasty name of “clawback.”  The issue is the same.  Firms receive incentives based on commitments about capital investment, jobs created, and wages.  What happens if they don’t live up to their end of the agreement? What happens if they don’t stay?  This issue has come up in a number of states. It was Michigan that invented the term clawback for demanding repayment of incentives when the firm failed to live up to its end of the agreement.  According to the Corporation for Enterprise Development, some 20 states have instituted accountability provisions. At a minimum, someone needs to follow up on companies.  Some firms, like BMW, may be pleasant surprises, generating more jobs and income than they had originally promised.  Others may have failed to live up to their promises and didn’t really earn or deserve those incentives.  Future agreements should probably include not only performance indicators but also some provision for recovery of part of the state’s investment in tax and nontax incentives if the firm doesn’t live up to its part of the bargain.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it is helpful to turn again to the work of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, which offers some general rules for reviewing of incentives that I think are worth considering.  They suggest eight guidelines for developing a good incentive package that protects the fiscal integrity of state and local governments.  Here is the list: