8/18/09

Should we promote job growth, or subsidize what could be unnecessary property development?


County business aid may be illegal


 


A plan meant to help small businesses in Guilford County could become a landmark policy in the state or be ruled illegal.


 


Steve Arnold, vice chairman of the Board of Commissioners, revealed this week the details of a plan that would give tax money back to nearly any commercial business that adds value to its property in the county.


 


Local tax breaks for specific groups — abatements — are illegal in North Carolina


 


…If it’s a tax rebate for development that a business would do anyway, then it could be legally questionable.


 


Arnold is promoting the plan as an incentive similar to others that the county gives to large businesses...


 


The business adding value to its property would have the difference of the related increase in property taxes returned to the business for three years.


 


No job-growth stipulation is included in the current policy draft


 


Opponents call it a tax abatement benefiting a certain segment of the county’s taxpayers.


 


Gerald Witt


Greensboro News and Record, August 17, 2009




Laissez faire




 


The theory or system of government


that upholds the autonomous character of the economic order


believing that government should intervene as little as possible


 in the direction of economic affairs


 


Ayn Rand


Atlas Shrugged



 

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