“The stakes are getting higher and the deals are getting worse for the taxpayer,” said Amy Liu, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and a longtime critic of tax incentives. PhotoMore than 200 North American cities submitted bids for Amazon’s second headquarters, and the enthusiasm is hardly surprising. Tax incentives, she said, make those investments harder for local governments to afford. Timothy J. Bartik, an economist at the Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Mich., has compiled a database of state tax incentives dating back to 1990. Tax Breaks Have Leveled Off State and local tax incentives grew rapidly in the 1990s but have since stabilized at about 30 percent of total corporate taxes.

Source: New York Times January 26, 2018 23:00 UTC