Investing in the Equitable State: How New Jersey’s Tax Incentive Programs Fail to Bring Equitable Growth
David D. Troutt, Marilyn Rubin and Wendy M. Nicholson
13, April 2022
This report and accompanying matrix are a critical evaluation of New Jersey’s tax incentives programs through the policy lens of equitable growth. Persistent inequality between New Jersey’s communities and households hurts all of New Jersey. We assumed that the expenditure of taxpayer dollars for private economic gain should further a public interest in making weaker markets stronger—i.e., equitable growth. We identified every state tax incentive that contained some aspect of economic fairness and analyzed each for how well it contributed to producing equitable growth. As the matrix at the end of the report shows, we found few gains and many lost opportunities.
If economic development broadly represents New Jersey’s interests in promoting economic welfare, then equitable economic development refocuses state policy on the state’s interest in improving economic welfare in the places where market need is greatest. Since many of these needs converge in communities of the state that have struggled with disinvestment and undernourished markets for many years, we believe a critical public purpose is served when the state steps in to revitalize markets where no one else will. This represents a policy of equitable economic development, an expansion of growth and opportunity.
For purposes of this analysis, equitable economic development means publicly incentivized growth that remediates gaps in economic mobility for households and communities because of location, market exclusion, sectors in need of support, or historic discrimination and structural bias.
Continue reading this report in its entirety below: