Economic Incentives - Carolina Journal

Picking winners is for losers

States with lower overall tax rates tend to make less use of targeted incentives. Those states also happen to grow faster than the desperate high-tax states throwing huge incentive grants around.

Lower taxes attract key leaders

When Democrats attack pro-growth tax reform as “trickle-down economics,” I can understand their rhetorical intent. But the charge is silly on multiple levels — including the fact that every Democrat who ever serves in state or local office spends great time and effort to try to recruit business executives, entrepreneurs, investors, and high-value professionals to...

State shouldn’t play favorites

Making North Carolina a more attractive place to live, work, shop, invest, and create businesses must be a high priority. But secret deals and preferential treatment are the wrong tools for the job.

Selective tax breaks are unwise

If Gov. Roy Cooper truly believes North Carolina’s tax burden is too low, shouldn’t he stop making incentive deals?

Film tax credit provision kills proposed franchise tax cut

A corporate tax cut expected to pass at the end of the General Assembly’s session surprisingly wound up on the cutting room floor. The House Finance Committee killed a franchise tax reduction bill Wednesday, Oct. 30, even though Republicans, who hold the majority, previously supported it. The bill was complicated by an unrelated provision added...

Brooke Conrad

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Insurance premiums could rise if Cooper keeps denying tax credits

North Carolina life insurance customers may pay higher premiums unless the Cooper administration reverses course on renewable-energy tax credits. That’s what the American Council of Life Insurers said in an Aug. 28 letter to Ronald Penny, Gov. Roy Cooper’s revenue secretary. ACLI regional Vice President Curtis Leonard said the Department of Revenue’s September 2018 decision...

Don Carrington

Is Cooper’s revenue department rejecting legitimate tax credits?

Gov. Roy Cooper, an advocate for renewable energy whose family leases land for solar farms, is denying tax credits for solar energy investments. Investors could lose as much as $500 million they were expecting from the state, one tax lawyer told Carolina Journal. Cooper’s Department of Revenue is basing the decision on a faulty interpretation...

Don Carrington

NCSU study shows tax incentives harm state’s economy

The economic costs of corporate tax incentives outweigh their benefits, a new study by N.C. State University researchers says. The study focused on three types of tax incentives — investment or job creation tax credits, property tax abatements, and research and development tax credits. Though perhaps the best known incentive, job creation or investment...

Leonard Robinson III

Bipartisan House group seeks to revive tax credits for filmmakers

How are North Carolina lawmakers different from movie directors? They find it hard to say “cut,” especially when giving Hollywood producers taxpayer subsidies to make films here. A bipartisan group of state representatives filed House Bill 751, resurrecting a 25 percent tax credit program. Legislators voted in 2014 to end a similar subsidy, which paid...

Dan Way

W-S lands major aircraft industry player without offering tax incentives

WINSTON-SALEM — No big announcement. No contentious public meetings. No press conference. But most important — no economic incentives. News that MRO Holdings Inc. — a leader in the aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul industry — was setting up shop in Winston-Salem’s Smith Reynolds Airport drew little fanfare. And that’s the way MRO Holdings chief executive...

Sam A. Hieb