NPQ: How the Tax Subsidy Game Is Played: A Consultant Shares Corporate Secrets
“This article marks the first of a series of articles co-produced by Good Jobs First and NPQ, titled Checking Corporate Welfare, Stories from the Front Lines. In this series, we take a hard look at the current system, which enables corporations to write off $95 billion from their state and local tax bills each year—and how local groups are organizing in cities across the nation to challenge this system. In these articles, you will hear from community leaders who, armed with data, are developing innovative public campaigns that are beginning to contain these corporate tax abatements—and restore funding for public schools and local public services.
For the first article in this series, however, we begin on the other side of the street—the corporate “site consultant” side. In the interview below, former corporate site consultant C.J. Girod discusses with Good Job First’s Greg LeRoy how the corporate site consultant industry works—and how it should be changed to enable cities and states to collect corporate tax revenue effectively and thereby rebuild their local tax base.”
Read the conversation at NPQ.