Massachusetts is perhaps best known for subsidizing large biotech and pharmaceutical firms through its Life Sciences Incentive Program. Besides these, General Electric got a $145 million package deal in 2016 for simply relocating its headquarters from Connecticut, and three other corporations have claimed megadeals.
The Massachusetts Office of Business Development administers the state’s targeted subsidy programs, while the Department of Revenue administers as-of-right tax breaks that any eligible company can claim directly on its tax returns.
Massachusetts is transparent when disclosing project information (including parent company names, which is rare) for programs that require applications, approvals, and/or agreements. However, only basic information is provided in tables, which need to be scraped from PDFs, and any extra details about what projects entail are presented in a format that doesn’t allow for multi-year, multi-project analyses.
The Department of Revenue publishes the annual tax expenditure budgets. The comptroller’s office prepares the Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports (ACFRs) in which the costs of the Economic Development, Life Sciences, and Film Tax Incentive Programs are disclosed. Massachusetts municipalities generally report tax abatements in accordance with Statement No. 77. There are no counties with governing bodies, and most school districts do not produce financial statements.
- See our analysis of GASB 77 data from 2017-2021 on our Massachusetts Fact Sheet.
- See who is responsible for the implementation of GASB 77 on our Massachusetts State Road Map.
In 2018, a Tax Expenditure Review Commission was officially formed and charged with producing biennial economic impact analyses of Massachusetts’ many tax breaks. The first report was issued in 2021. Until then, only the film tax credit got regular reviews by the Department of Revenue.
Our database tracking corporate misconduct, Violation Tracker, scours 450 federal, state and local agencies in compiling resolved civil and criminal cases against companies. See the list of state agencies from which we collect information in Massachusetts.
Last updated August 2024.