Voice For Liberty

Tag: Tax abatements

  • Wichita presents industrial revenue bonds

    Wichita presents industrial revenue bonds

    A presentation by the City of Wichita regarding IRBs is good as far as it goes, which is not far enough.

    Recently the City of Wichita prepared a short video explaining the city’s industrial revenue bonds (IRB) program. The video may be viewed on YouTube by clicking here.

    Several times the presenters emphasized that in the IRB program, the city does not lend money. They properly identify the true purpose of the program, which is to subsidize companies by allowing them to avoid paying property taxes and possibly sales taxes.

    Several times the presenters emphasized that the IRB program has no cost to the city. But that isn’t true. Part of the rationale for taxes, especially the property taxes that cities, counties, and school districts collect, is to pay for services that people and business firms demand. Well, don’t new businesses firms demand or require services from the government? And if a business is not paying its share of taxes, who is paying for the services it consumes?

    If we don’t think that a new or expanded business spurs demand for services, then we need to rethink the basis of taxation.

    The presenters mentioned the benefit-cost analysis produced for the city by Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University and concluded that the city profits from the IRB program. This analysis purports that if the city incurs costs — either by spending one dollar or giving up one dollar of tax revenue — it will receive a certain amount in return. City policy requires that the city receive $1.30 or more in benefits for each dollar of cost. But there are issues:

    • The city says IRBs have no cost, but the benefit-cost ratio identifies costs. The city hopes the benefits outweigh these costs.
    • There is no guarantee that the city will receive any benefits, or that the benefits will be close to what the CEDBR model estimates.
    • The CEDBR model asks companies to make projections of economic activity for up to ten years in the future. Especially in the out-years, these estimates are subject to large errors.
    • No effort is made to scrutinize these projections. They are taken at face value, as supplied by the applicant company.
    • The benefits to the city are in the form of taxes paid. Taxes are a burden to those who must pay them.
    • Applicant companies do not have to demonstrate economic necessity.
    • The policy of requiring a benefit of $1.30 for each dollar of cost has many loopholes.

    Perhaps the most important policy issue is that the city realizes the benefits of increased economic activity whether or not the activity is subsidized with IRB tax breaks. The benefit-cost ratio for unsubsidized projects is infinite: All benefit, no cost. Therefore, the benefit-cost ratio is meaningful only for those projects which could not proceed without the subsidy.

    Some incentive programs require the demonstration of economic necessity. That is not the case with IRBs.

    Additionally, when the city issues IRBs and grants tax abatements, other jurisdictions are affected. Both the overlapping county and school district have their property tax collections eliminated. If a sales tax exemption is granted, the state is most prominently affected, as nearly all sales tax paid goes to the state. (For sales tax paid in Sedgwick county, the state’s share is 86.7 percent.) None of these overlapping jurisdictions can opt-out of the tax abatement that the city imposes.

  • Freestanding emergency room in Wichita closes

    Freestanding emergency room in Wichita closes

    The conversion of a medical facility should receive city scrutiny due to tax breaks granted based on its original use.

    The Wichita Eagle reports that a freestanding emergency room in northeast Wichita has closed after two years. It will be converted to a cardiology office under the same ownership.

    As I reported in Free standing emergency department about to open in Wichita, the facility received property tax abatements worth an estimated $61,882 per year in the first year. The abatement was scheduled to last for five years, with a likely extension for an additional five years. These abatements were obtained through the use of the industrial revenue bonds program.

    The emergency room, also called a freestanding emergency department, qualified for tax abatements under a city policy that “requires medical facilities to attract at least 30% of patients from outside the Wichita MSA.” It is not known whether the shift from an emergency department to a cardiology office will meet this requirement.

    Further, the ordinance the council passed refers specifically to “an emergency medical facility,” not a cardiology office.

    These two significant changes ought to, at minimum, be brought to the attention of the Wichita City Council.

    Also reported in Free standing emergency department about to open in Wichita, treatment in these emergency departments is expensive. While I do not have information on this specific ED, UnitedHealth Group found this in its analysis of freestanding emergency departments: “FSEDs largely treat non-emergent conditions: 2.3 percent of FSED visits in the U.S. are emergent or immediate and require services unique to an ED.” Also, “In Texas, the average cost of treating common conditions at an FSED ($3,217) is 22 times more than at a physician office ($146) and 19 times more than at an urgent care center ($167).” UnitedHealth Group is a large insurer.

  • Missing from Wichita city documents: Sales tax

    Missing from Wichita city documents: Sales tax

    It would be simple for the City of Wichita to include additional relevant information regarding economic development incentive decisions.

    When the Wichita City Council makes decisions regarding economic development incentives, the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University prepares an analysis for the city. The purpose of the analysis is to determine benefit-cost ratios for overlapping governmental jurisdictions, purporting to show that these jurisdictions will receive more in benefits than they pay in costs. An example of the analysis for a large project is here.

    The city does not make this analysis document available to the public. It is a public record, though. Every time I have asked, they have been provided.

    One thing, then, that the city could do to increase transparency is to simply make these analysis documents available. Perhaps not in the agenda packet, but as a supplement, such as the way the city provides Powerpoint presentations for council meetings.

    Another thing the city could do is to include relevant data that would take just a little more effort.

    Consider sales tax exemptions. For a recent industrial revenue bond decision, city documents stated: “The project will also qualify for a sales tax exemption on bond-financed purchases.” 1 But the document doesn’t state the dollar value of the sales tax exemption, even though the CEDBR analysis includes this number. 2 That value, for this recent project, is $1,111,264.

    Is that information relevant to decision-makers? City documents estimate the value of the property tax abatements in the first year as $773,604. So for the total tax forgiveness received in the first year, the sales tax exemption is larger than the property tax abatement, accounting for 59.0 percent of the total. 3 That is relevant.

    Even over the ten-year life of the property tax abatement, the sales tax exemption is still 11.8 percent of the total tax forgiveness. That — the duration of the property tax abatement — is another opportunity to increase transparency. The CEDBR analysis gives the total cost of the incentives for ten years. (A nearby table summarizes.) These totals are speculative, as the city council must revisit the matter in five years to determine whether the company deserves the property tax abatement for an additional five years. (This is known as a “five-plus-five year tax exemption.”)

    But the total value of the exemptions is relevant, as it flows into the benefit-cost ratio calculations.

    Given all the numbers the city presently reports from the CEDBR analysis documents, not including the value of the sales tax exemption is a significant omission, and one easy to correct.

    —
    Notes

    1. Wichita city council agenda packet for January 21, 2020, item V-1 ↩
    2. Center for Economic Development and Business Research. January 8, 2020, version 8. Available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mg3B0sJVy67_r4gNl4NZbclZKZsdgQUx/view. ↩
    3. Assuming all sales taxes are paid during the first year. ↩
  • Sedgwick County tax exemptions

    Sedgwick County tax exemptions

    Unlike the City of Wichita, Sedgwick County has kept track of its tax exemptions.

    As part of an effort to increase efficiency and management of Sedgwick County government, former county manager Michael Scholes implemented numerous changes, as detailed in the document Efficiencies in Sedgwick County government. One management accomplishment was described as this:

    Developed a tax system and business intelligence query to identify Industrial Revenue Bonds (IRB) & Economic Development (EDX) tax exemptions and report foregone property tax revenues for Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) 77 reporting. The report provides the ability to report by tax authority, company, and real or personal property for one (1) or up to four (4) years. Prior reporting was time consuming and error prone; requiring manual data entry into Excel spreadsheets.

    The county has not made this report available on its website. To access this report in an alternative manner, click here

    The City of Wichita, to my knowledge, does not provide information like this, except as a total amount in the city’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). (The city and county numbers are not in agreement, and by a large amount.)

    Of note, the mayor’s page on the Wichita city government website holds this: “Mayor Longwell has championed many issues related to improving the community including government accountability, accessibility and transparency …” So far, the mayor’s leadership and stewardship has not produced this level of information.

    Of further note, a majority of the Sedgwick County Commission decided to fire Michael Scholes.

  • Wichita business press needs to step up

    Wichita business press needs to step up

    If a newspaper is going to write a news story, it might as well take a moment to copy and paste information from a city council agenda packet. Especially when what is missing from the story is perhaps the most important information.

    When the Wichita City Council approved an Industrial Revenue Bond issue at its July 10, 2018 meeting, the city’s business press covered the matter. In the Wichita Eagle, the story fails to mention the motivation for the item. 1

    The meeting agenda packet for this item, very near its start, states plainly the benefits of the IRBs: “Cargill Incorporated (Cargill) is requesting a Letter of Intent (LOI) for the issuance of Industrial Revenue Bonds (IRBs) in an amount not to exceed $38,000,000 and an 81.5% five-plus-five-year tax abatement and a sales tax exemption for the construction of a new biodiesel facility in north Wichita.” 2

    There it is, in plain sight and language: Cargill will save a lot of money in taxes by using these bonds. How much? The same city document details some of the savings:

    Based on the current mill levy, the estimated tax value of exempted property for the first full year is $337,904. The value of an 81.5% real property tax exemption (assuming the property is appraised at 80% of the capital investment) as applicable to taxing jurisdictions is:

    City $94,109
    County $84,677
    State $4,321
    USD 259 $154,797

    The agenda packet doesn’t give an amount for the value of the sales tax exemption, but if all $38,000,000 in bond proceeds was spent on taxable items, sales tax would be $2,850,000. The actual sales tax savings will likely be less than that, but still a lot. (We’ll likely never know, as the Kansas Department of Revenue won’t release the value of sales tax exemptions associated with bond issues.)

    Why didn’t the Eagle report this? I don’t know. But the property and sales tax exemptions are the driving motivation behind almost all requests for IRBs. 3

    It’s not the case that the company can’t obtain financing on the market. Many IRBs are purchased by the requesting company, as is the case with these bonds, according to the agenda packet: “The bonds will be privately placed with Cargill.”

    Instead, Kansas law requires, in most cases, that to issue property and sales tax abatements, IRBs must be used. Again, from the agenda packet: “To insure that all of the real property improvements are receiving the tax abatement, the improvements must be bond financed.” 4

    Why can’t the city council simply wave a magic wand and absolve Cargill of paying millions of dollars in property and sales taxes? This is what the city council did, but in a roundabout way.

    But because the tax giveaway is mixed with confusing details of bonds, many citizens don’t notice the giveaway. Especially when our city’s leading newspaper does not report this.

    Wichita Business Journal reporting was a little better, mentioning the property and sales tax exemptions, but not their monetary value. 5

    This article also contains this: “With IRBs, the city serves as a pass-through entity for developers to obtain a lower interest rate on projects. IRBs require no taxpayer commitment.” This is language the newspaper often includes when reporting on IRB issues, and it is simply not true. In this case, a portion of this project qualifies for tax-exempt financing, as it is a solid waste processing facility. 6

    But for the remainder of the project, as is the case for most IRB-funded projects, it is not likely the facility will save on interest costs with IRBs. The article is correct in that IRBs require no taxpayer commitment. The city makes no guarantee as to the bond repayment. If the city did guarantee repayment, that would help the borrower obtain a lower interest rate. But there is no guarantee.

    —
    Notes

    1. Finger, Stan. Wichita City Council approves bonds for Cargill expansion. Available at https://www.kansas.com/news/business/article214622565.html. ↩
    2. Wichita City Council Agenda packet for July, 10, 2017. Item IV-1. ↩
    3. Weeks, Bob. Industrial revenue bonds in Kansas. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/industrial-revenue-bonds-kansas/. ↩
    4. As noted below, there is a slight wrinkle in this IRB issue, as some of the financed property is exempt from federal income taxes on interest payments and requires IRBs for that particular property. This is an unusual factor, and does not require that all the plant be financed with IRBs. ↩
    5. Daniel McCoy and Bryan Horwath. City Council approves IRBs for Cargill biodiesel plant. Available at https://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2018/07/10/city-council-approves-irbs-for-cargill-biodiesel.html. ↩
    6. “The solid waste processing component qualifies under Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations for tax exempt financing, which can save the company interest expense. Of the total project, approximately $30,000,000 would qualify as a Solid Waste Processing Facility, and therefore, eligible for tax-exempt financing.” Agenda Packet for July 10, 2018. ↩
  • How much will this cost Wichita taxpayers?

    How much will this cost Wichita taxpayers?

    How much, if anything, do tax abatements cost?

    Someone asked a question regarding an item on the Wichita City Council agenda today: How much will this cost taxpayers?

    The item in question is agenda item IV-1: Public Hearing and Request for a Letter of Intent to Issue Industrial Revenue Bonds (WAM Investments #6, LLC). 1

    Attached was an article from the Wichita Business Journal previewing the matter. 2

    How much do these bonds cost taxpayers? It’s important to remember that with Industrial Revenue Bonds in Kansas, cities and counties are not the lender. 3 If this company was not able to pay the bond interest or principle, the city would be under no obligation to pay. The city makes no guarantee as to repayment. Bond buyers know this.

    (As an aside, the Business Journal article states: “However, using IRB financing can help the company secure a lower interest rate.” This is simply not true unless the bonds are tax-exempt municipal bonds. Those bonds have a lower interest rate because the interest income is not subject to income tax. But the IRBs considered today are not tax-exempt.)

    So if the city is not lending money, and if the city is not guaranteeing repayment, do these bonds have a cost to taxpayers? The answer depends on which side of the fence you sit.

    The benefit to WAM, today’s applicant, is that IRBs carry with them tax abatements. Specifically, a whole or partial exemption from paying some property taxes. Additionally, IRBs also enable escape from paying sales tax on purchases made with bond proceeds.

    So one way to look at the IRBs is that they do indeed have a cost. The city, county, school district, and state will not receive tax revenue they otherwise would receive.

    Supporters of this incentive make two rebuttals. One is that without the tax abatements, the project would not be built. Therefore, no tax revenue. So by abating taxes for a period of time, the project can be built, and after the abatements expire, it will be paying taxes. (For this project, the property tax abatement is for five or likely ten years, with a reduced rate of abatement in the final five.)

    The second argument is that by building something, new jobs and commerce are created. These new employees and commercial activity pay taxes. The city and other jurisdictions receive more from these new taxes than they gave up in tax abatements. This is called the benefit-cost ratio. It’s computed by Center for Economic Development and Business Research (CEDBR) at Wichita State University. City documents often refer to something like a “1.57:1 benefit-cost ratio,” meaning that for every one dollar foregone in tax revenue, the city expects to gain $1.57 in other tax revenue.

    There are problems with these arguments. For the first: The developer of this project says the incentives are “critical.” If true, this claim exposes a large problem, which is if taxes are so high as to block investment, how are we going to grow as a city and region? Will every project require tax incentives? If not, why do some say they need incentives, and some don’t?

    Second: Remember that government says that with the new project, tax revenue will increase. But this almost always happens regardless of whether the company has received incentives. Therefore, the benefit-cost ratio calculations are valid only if incentives were absolutely necessary.

    Are incentives necessary? The benefiting companies usually make their case with a lot of numbers and projections, most of which are simply guesses. Plus, there is strong incentive to not tell — to not know — the truth. Here’s why. Suppose fictional company XYZ dangles the idea of expanding its presence in Wichita, or maybe in some other city. XYZ cites incentive packages offered by other cities. Wichita comes up with millions in incentives, and XYZ decides to expand in Wichita. Question: Were the incentives necessary? Was the threat to expand elsewhere genuine? If XYZ admits the threat was not real, then it has falsely held Wichita hostage for incentives. If the city or state admits the threat was not real, then citizens wonder why government gave away so much. No one has an incentive to be truthful. 4

    Back to the item on today’s agenda. How much tax revenue is foregone through the abatements? City documents in the agenda packet did not have these numbers, but a presentation made to council members did, as follows:

    Value of one year 95% tax abatement ($6,000,000 at 80%)
    City of Wichita: $37,240
    Sedgwick County: $33,508
    USD 375 (Circle public schools): $61,255
    State of Kansas: $1,710
    Total: $133,713

    These values would apply annually for five years. If occupancy goals are met, the incentives would apply for another five years, at a lower rate. (The values above are 95 percent of the usual taxes. The rate for the second five years would be 50 percent of the usual taxes.)

    (As an aside, the Business Journal should not use headlines like it did in this case: “Wichita City Council to consider $6 million in IRBs for industrial spec building.” A better headline would be something like “Wichita City Council to consider $133,713 in annual tax abatements.” That is the real economic transaction that happened today.)

    But this is not all. The applicant company will almost certainly receive an exemption from paying sales tax on the building. City documents did not provide an estimate for how much sales tax might be abated, but it could be several hundred thousand dollars.

    —
    Notes

    1. Wichita City Council agenda packet for May 1, 2108. ↩
    2. Daniel McCoy. Wichita City Council to consider $6 million in IRBs for industrial spec building. Wichita Business Journal, April 30, 2018. Available at https://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2018/04/30/wichita-city-council-to-consider-6-million-in-irbs.html. ↩
    3. Weeks, Bob. Industrial revenue bonds in Kansas. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/industrial-revenue-bonds-kansas/. ↩
    4. For more on this, see LeRoy, Greg. The Great American Jobs Scam. Especially chapter two, titled Site Location 101: How Companies Decide Where to Expand or Relocate. The entire book may be read online at http://www.greatamericanjobsscam.com/pages/preview-book.html. A relevant excerpt: “These prisoners’ dilemma games also enable companies to create fictions about cause and effect. These fictions can be used to create public versions of how deals happened that no one can credibly contradict, because the company’s real decision-making process will never be revealed. The most important fiction to maintain, of course, is that subsidies matter in deciding where a company expands or relocates. For example, being able to send secret signals to competing cities means companies can tell contradictory stories to different cities and have no fear of being exposed. If a company really has its heart set on City A, it can tell that city that it is in the hunt, but needs to do better. Meanwhile, it can send less urgent signals to Cities B and C, even if they offered bigger packages at first. Eventually, City A offers the biggest package, and the company announces its decision to go there.” ↩
  • Sedgwick County’s David Dennis on economic development

    Sedgwick County’s David Dennis on economic development

    Following the Wichita Mayor, the Chair of the Sedgwick County Commission speaks on economic development.

    Last week Sedgwick County Commissioner David Dennis penned a column for the Wichita Eagle praising the county’s efforts in economic development. 1 Dennis is also chair of the commission this year.

    In his column, the commissioner wrote: “Economic development is a key topic for the Board of County Commissioners and for me in particular. Right now we have a lot of momentum to make our community a more attractive place for people and businesses.”

    This emphasis on the word “momentum” seems to be a fad among Wichita’s government leaders. More about this later.

    Dennis also wrote: “Traditional governmental incentives are a thing of the past. There are no more blank checks from Sedgwick County for businesses.”

    Except: The county participates in incentive programs that allow companies like Spirit to escape paying taxes, and when you don’t have to pay taxes, that’s the same economic effect as someone giving you cash to pay those taxes. Spirit Aerosystems will receive Industrial Revenue Bonds, which are not a loan of money to Spirit, but allow the company to avoid paying property taxes and sales taxes. 2 3 These incentives are a cost to the county and other units of government, and are as good as cash to Spirit. (For this and many other projects the county is not involved in the approval of the IRB program, but it doesn’t object, and it sees its tacit approval as part of its partnership with the City of Wichita.)

    Besides this, the county engages in traditional incentives — almost like a blank check — but disguises them. In this case, for example, the county is contributing $7 million towards the construction of a building exclusively for Spirit’s use. How will the county pay for that? The memorandum that the county agreed to states: “The county participation of $7 million US is anticipated to be available cash.” 4

    You might be wondering if the county is treating this contribution as an investment that a business would make, where it would earn back its investment plus a profit by collecting rent from Spirit. After all, county leaders tell us they want to operate government like a business.

    But, you’d be wrong if you thought that. The memorandum specifies the rent as $1 per year. Not $1 per square foot per year, but $1 per year for the entire building. Furthermore, at the end of 20 years, Spirit will have the option to purchase the property for $1.

    There’s really no way to characterize this transaction other than as a multi-million giveaway to Spirit. Not directly as a blank check or cash, but in a roundabout way that costs the county and benefits Spirit in the same way as cash.

    I can understand how Dennis and others like Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell want to convince the public that they are no longer dishing out cash. Often, the public doesn’t like that. So instead they do the same thing in roundabout ways like leasing a building for $1 per year or paying millions in cash for a “parking easement” for which the city has no real use. 5 Chairman Dennis and others hope you won’t notice, but these leaders would be more credible if they didn’t try to obfuscate the truth.

    Sedgwick County jobs. Click for larger.
    Sedgwick County jobs, change from prior year. Click for larger.
    At the end of his column, Dennis wrote: “There is a lot of momentum and forward movement in our community right now and I’m encouraged to see what we can achieve as a team.”

    There’s that word again: momentum. Coincidently, shortly after this column was published, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published an update to the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. It shows the number of jobs in Sedgwick County declining. This update was released after Dennis wrote his column, but as can be seen from the nearby charts, the slowdown in Sedgwick County jobs and the Wichita-area economy is not a new trend.

    If Dennis really believes our economy has “momentum and forward movement,” it is my sincere hope that he is simply uninformed or misinformed about these statistics. Because if he is aware, we can only conclude that he is something else that is worse than being merely ignorant.

    —
    Notes

    1. David Dennis. Sedgwick County part of drive to strengthen area workforce. Wichita Eagle, March 5, 2018. Available at http://www.kansas.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article203559734.html. ↩
    2. Weeks, Bob. Industrial revenue bonds in Kansas. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/industrial-revenue-bonds-kansas/. ↩
    3. Weeks, Bob. Spirit expands in Wichita. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/wichita-government/spirit-expands-wichita/. ↩
    4. Sedgwick County. RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE EXECUTION OF A MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING WITH THE CITY OF WICHITA AND SPIRIT AEROSYSTEMS, INC. RELATING TO PROJECT ECLIPSE. Available at https://sedgwickcounty.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3290907&GUID=E732A9A2-C01A-4ACE-B134-C15E551F989F. ↩
    5. Weeks, Bob. More Cargill incentives from Wichita detailed. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/wichita-government/cargill-incentives-from-wichita-detailed/. ↩
  • Spirit expands in Wichita

    Spirit expands in Wichita

    It’s good news that Spirit AeroSystems is expanding in Wichita. Let’s look at the cost.

    While it is good news that Spirit AeroSystems is expanding its Wichita operations, it is not without cost to several governmental agencies. Here’s a summary of what is publicly available so far.

    First, a new “entity” will be formed in order to facilitate the construction and ownership of a new building on the Spirit campus. 1

    This entity will be funded with $7 million in cash from Sedgwick County and $3 million cash from the City of Wichita. Further, the city will forgive Spirit’s debt of $3.5 million associated with a water project. 2

    Second, through the mechanism of Industrial Revenue Bonds,3 Spirit receives a property tax exemption of one hundred percent for five years, with renewal for another five years if goals are met. Despite the use of the term “bond,” no governmental entity is lending money to Spirit, and no one except Spirit is liable for bond repayment.

    Third: The bonds confer another benefit to Spirit: According to city documents, “IRBs will, pursuant to STATE law, provide for a sales tax exemption on materials and labor subject to sales tax necessary to construct and equip FACILITY.” 4 City documents give no dollar amount is given for the sales tax exemption. But in the analysis conducted by Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University these figures are used for the amount of sales tax exemption: City of Wichita: $279,445. Sedgwick County: $137,354. State of Kansas: $3,120,000. Total: $3,536,799. 5

    Fourth, this project will undoubtedly qualify for PEAK, or Promoting Employment Across Kansas. This is a State of Kansas program that allows companies to keep the state income taxes their employees pay through paycheck withholding, less a small fee. 6 It isn’t possible to know in advance how much PEAK benefit the company will receive, because the individual circumstances of each employee determine the income tax withheld. The following calculation, however, gives an indication of the magnitude of the amount of PEAK benefits Spirit can expect:

    $56,000 annual salary / 26 pay periods = $2,154 per bi-weekly pay period. For a married worker with two children, withholding tables show $55 to be withheld each pay period, or $55 * 26 = $1,430 per year. For 1,000 employees, the PEAK benefit is $1,430,000 per year. 7

    There may be other programs that this project qualifies for.

    Are these incentives necessary?

    Taxpayers might be wondering if these incentives are necessary for Spirit to be able to expand its operations, and for it to select Wichita as the site. Spirit says it has received generous offers from other locations. If so, Spirit could do itself a favor by revealing these offers. So too, could other Wichita companies that have claimed intense courtship by other cities. But the economic development industry operates in darkness.

    One thing that would also increase the credibility of economic development efforts is for Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell (and others) to stop making claims of “no more cash incentives.” The city explicitly offers cash in this proposal. The city also offers to cancel a debt, which is just like cash. Forgiveness of future taxes is as good as cash, too.

    For years we’ve been told that Wichita needs to diversify its economy, meaning that it relies too heavily on the aircraft industry. This expansion by Spirit will undoubtedly heighten that concentration. We should not turn down this expansion of our local economy. But the incentives that are offered have a cost, and that cost is paid — partly — by other business firms in other industries that are trying to grow in Wichita.

    Many will undoubtedly cheer the Spirit announcement as an economic development win on a large scale. It will add many jobs. But the Wichita-area economy is so far behind it will take much more growth than this to catch up with the rest of the nation. In fact, the Wichita-area economy shrank last year. 8 And while many cheer our low unemployment rate, sole reliance on that number hides a shrinking labor force. 9

    Also, let’s be appropriately humble when boasting about this expansion. A region’s largest employer deciding to expand in the same city: This is the minimum level of competence we ought to expect from our economic development machinery.

    Further, economists caution us to look beyond any single project, no matter how large, and consider the entirety of the local economy. As economist Art Hall has noted, large-employer businesses have no measurable net economic effect on local economies when properly measured. “The primary finding is that the location of a large firm has no measurable net economic effect on local economies when the entire dynamic of location effects is taken into account. Thus, the siting of large firms that are the target of aggressive recruitment efforts fails to create positive private sector gains and likely does not generate significant public revenue gains either.” 10

    That’s assuming that the incentives even work as advertised in the first place. Alan Peters and Peter Fisher, in their paper titled The Failures of Economic Development Incentives published in Journal of the American Planning Association, wrote on the effects of incentives. A few quotes from the study, with emphasis added:

    Given the weak effects of incentives on the location choices of businesses at the interstate level, state governments and their local governments in the aggregate probably lose far more revenue, by cutting taxes to firms that would have located in that state anyway than they gain from the few firms induced to change location.

    On the three major questions — Do economic development incentives create new jobs? Are those jobs taken by targeted populations in targeted places? Are incentives, at worst, only moderately revenue negative? — traditional economic development incentives do not fare well. It is possible that incentives do induce significant new growth, that the beneficiaries of that growth are mainly those who have greatest difficulty in the labor market, and that both states and local governments benefit fiscally from that growth. But after decades of policy experimentation and literally hundreds of scholarly studies, none of these claims is clearly substantiated. Indeed, as we have argued in this article, there is a good chance that all of these claims are false.

    The most fundamental problem is that many public officials appear to believe that they can influence the course of their state or local economies through incentives and subsidies to a degree far beyond anything supported by even the most optimistic evidence. We need to begin by lowering their expectations about their ability to micromanage economic growth and making the case for a more sensible view of the role of government — providing the foundations for growth through sound fiscal practices, quality public infrastructure, and good education systems — and then letting the economy take care of itself.

    —
    Notes

    1. “The CITY, COUNTY and COMPANY would each take action to establish a new legal entity separate and apart from the CITY, COUNTY and COMPANY for development of the PROJECT (the “ENTITY”) which will take such form as the PARTIES may approve.” Memorandum of Understanding for Project Eclipse, Section I.A. Contained within agenda packet for Wichita City Council meeting for December 13, 2017. ↩
    2. “The COUNTY participation of $7 million US is anticipated to be available cash; the CITY participation would consist of cash in the amount of $3 million US, forgiveness of $3.5 million US in future COMPANY payments associated with the CAPITAL COMPONENT and an agreement to make additional capital improvements relating to the WATER AGREEMENT in an approximate cost of $1 million US.” Memorandum of Understanding for Project Eclipse, Section I.B ↩
    3. Weeks, Bob. Industrial revenue bonds in Kansas. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/industrial-revenue-bonds-kansas/. ↩
    4. Memorandum of Understanding for Project Eclipse, Section I.3.E ↩
    5. Project Eclipse – ROI calcs plus author’s calculation. Available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uGaxTgrctYpBjkG7PR6bP81SxgFjpzjo/. ↩
    6. Weeks, Bob. PEAK, or Promoting Employment Across Kansas. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/peak-promoting-employment-across-kansas/. ↩
    7. Kansas Department of Revenue Withholding tables. Available at https://www.ksrevenue.org/pdf/whtables2017.pdf. ↩
    8. Weeks, Bob. Wichita economy shrinks. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/economics/wichita-economy-shrinks/. ↩
    9. “It is possible that the unemployment rate falls while the number of people employed falls or rises slowly. This is the general trend in Wichita for the past seven years or so.” Weeks, Bob. Wichita employment up. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/wichita-government/wichita-employment-up/. ↩
    10. William F. Fox and Matthew N. Murray, “Do Economic Effects Justify the Use of Fiscal Incentives?” Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 71, No. 1, 2004, p. 79. A ↩
  • Sales tax incentives yes, but no relief on grocery sales tax

    Sales tax incentives yes, but no relief on grocery sales tax

    Is it equitable for business firms to pay no sales tax, while low-income families pay sales tax on groceries?

    Last week I wondered if the city’s agenda packet for economic development incentives proposed for BG Products was complete. 1 Since the city’s narrative had no mention of a sales tax exemption, but the accompanying ordinance that was passed authorized a sales tax exemption, I wondered if the analysis performed by the Wichita State University Center for Economic Development and Business Research was correct.

    Now that I’ve received the document, it appears that CEDBR’s analysis properly included the cost of the sales tax exemption incentive. 2 The city’s narrative did not mention the sales tax exemption.

    According to the CEDBR analysis, the sales tax exemption has a cost of $368,417. It is shared among the city, county and state, with 88 percent born by the state. 3

    From a public policy perspective, we must wonder whether this incentive, and the other incentives BG Products received, are necessary for the company to proceed with its expansion in Wichita. The Industrial Revenue Bond program, which is the enabler of these incentives, does not require the applicant companies to demonstrate financial need. There are a few requirements, but none have to do with economic or financial necessity. 4

    The State of Kansas applies the full sales tax rate to groceries, and is one of the few states to do this. 5 This tax disproportionally harms low-income families. 6 This is a problem in equity, in that business firms may request sales tax exemptions without showing need, while low-income families have no way to avoid the sales tax on their groceries.

    —
    Notes

    1. Weeks, Bob. Wichita Business Journal grants city council excess power. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/wichita-government/wichita-business-journal-grants-city-council-excess-power/. ↩
    2. Analysis by Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University. Available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B97azj3TSm9MZXJaOVhzUzBJc2M/. ↩
    3. From the analysis performed by the city by Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University, these are the values of the sales tax incentives:
      City: 29,109
      County: 14,308
      State: 325,000
      Total: 368,417
      With the sales tax rate of 7.50%, this implies taxable spending of $4,912,227. ↩
    4. “The percentage of taxes abated is based on capital investment and job creation. Majority of goods or services sold must be destined for customers outside of the Wichita Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Company must pay average wages equal to or greater than the industry or Wichita MSA wage rate. City benefit/cost ration must be at least 1.3 to 1.” City of Wichita, Economic Development Incentives. Available at http://www.wichita.gov/Economic/Pages/Incentives.aspx. ↩
    5. “Kansas has nearly the highest statewide sales tax rate for groceries. Cities and counties often add even more tax on food.” Weeks, Bob. Kansas sales tax on groceries is among the highest. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/kansas-sales-tax-groceries-among-highest/. ↩
    6. “Analysis of household expenditure data shows that a proposed sales tax in Wichita affects low income families in greatest proportion, confirming the regressive nature of sales taxes.” Weeks, Bob. Wichita sales tax hike harms low income families most severely. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/wichita-government/wichita-sales-tax-hike-harms-low-income-families-severely/. ↩