City Council Candidate Ellen Lawrence co-authors State Tax Incentive Article

Ellen Briskin Lawrence – City Council candidate for Ward 2 – just co-authored an article titled, “A Review of State Tax Incentive Programs for Creating Jobs,” appearing in the March-April 2013 edition of the Journal of State Taxation (published under my maiden name).

Creve Coeur does a great job leveraging our capital Improvement dollars for road and sidewalk construction and repair with grant money. It would be interesting to see if city administrators would be able to partner with new businesses in Creve Coeur to help them participate in these programs. Could such a program help bring new business to the city?

Ellen B. Lawrence, Ph.D.

Here is the article abstract for your review. For those interested, the complete text is attached as a pdf file.

Abstract

 State tax incentive programs for companies have become a very popular method for encouraging economic development and the creation of new jobs. Cities and states often aggressively compete against each other for new business. The winners often cite the number of new jobs brought to the area and the increase in future tax revenues as measures of their success. Critics often question the number of new jobs created by a particular project and cite limited anecdotal evidence showing that taxpayers sometimes failed to recover the tax dollars spent in attracting a new business or keeping an existing employer. This article evaluates some of the economic benefits and costs of tax incentive programs, with a special focus on programs in Missouri. We also discuss the desirable characteristics of successful programs and how to make them more accountable to the taxpayers.