Audit blasts $11B in New Jersey tax breaks, says no way to check if jobs were created

A state auditor issued a scathing review of New Jersey’s tax incentive programs on Wednesday, blasting the state agency charged with economic development for approving nearly $11 billion in tax credits without processes in place to make sure companies actually created or retained the jobs they said they would.

The audit, ordered by Gov. Phil Murphy last January and performed by the Office of the State Comptroller, painted a picture of gross mismanagement of taxpayer-funded corporate subsidies. In a small sample of the roughly 400 companies that have received tax breaks since 2005, for example, one in five jobs reported to have been created or retained could not be verified. One unnamed company received $29 million in tax breaks even as its employment level dropped, the audit found.

And because most of the $11 billion in awarded tax breaks have yet to be paid out, the state could be deprived of much-needed revenue for decades to come as companies meet the job or capital investment targets that trigger the credits.

“The comptroller’s report confirms some of our worst suspicions, that billions of dollars’ worth of state tax incentives were awarded by the Christie administration with little regard to oversight or transparency and even less regard for making sure we actually got a return on the taxpayers’ investment,” Murphy said at a news conference to discuss the audit Wednesday.

Read more: https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2019/01/09/11-b-corporate-tax-breaks-didnt-log-job-creation-nj-auditor-says/2523575002/