HB359, HB6041, and HB6059 Help to End Corporate Subsidies in Florida
Tallahassee, FL — Representative Anna V. Eskamani has filed three bills designed to end corporate giveaways in Florida and increase corporate tax transparency.
“Corporate giveaways, which often go to the corporations that make the biggest campaign contributions or employ the most expensive roster of lobbyists, are an expensive, inefficient and ineffective use of taxpayer dollars to create and maintain jobs,” said Representative Anna V. Eskamani. “Unfortunately lawmakers across the country and right here in Florida face a prisoners’ dilemma — we feel forced to participate in corporate giveaways because nearly everyone else does. The only way to end this race to the bottom is an interstate agreement that phases us all away from this ineffective and wasteful game while removing the parts of Florida statute that feeds into this problem.”
HB359, titled Agreement For Best Practices in Economic Development, takes the first step in phasing out corporate giveaways by forming an anti-poaching agreement among state governments that prohibits states from offering company-specific tax incentives or company-specific grants as an inducement for entities to relocate existing facilities. The interstate compact would also create a national board of experts charged with finding more ways to help state and local governments escape from the current “prisoner’s dilemma” of economic development and instead implement a level playing field for all employers, big and small.
HB6059 and HB6041 are both repealer bills.
HB6059 would repeal a law that allows corporations like Amazon and others that try to squeeze publicly funded incentive packages from local governments to hide the details of those discussions for up to two years. These so-called “economic development” deals would instead have to be negotiated in broad daylight – where all taxpayers could weigh in and evaluate the proposed agreements for themselves.
“The only one who benefits when an incentive package is negotiated in secret is the big business that is trying to play states and cities against each other and win the most lopsided deal it can,” Eskamani said.“Transparency is the cornerstone of good government – especially when we’re talking about giving away Floridians’ hard-earned dollars. If Amazon or anyone else thinks they deserve public money, they can make their case to the public in the sunshine.”
HB6041 would repeal Florida’s “Urban High-Crime Area Job Tax Credit Program,” a tax break created more than 20 years ago that was supposed to draw investment to poverty-stricken urban communities around the state. But it has instead become a permanent taxpayer subsidy for Universal Studios, the Orlando resort that is owned by Comcast Corp. — one of the world’s biggest and most profitable corporations. Since 1999, Florida taxpayers have paid out $35.2 million through the high-crime incentive program — and $17.4 million of that has been paid to Universal’s theme parks and hotels. Walmart ($2.5 million) and Publix ($1.1 million) have also profited off the program.
Even the law’s original sponsors, who wanted to help neglected communities like Orlando’s Historic Black neighborhood Parramore, say the program has been abused. But the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature has repeatedly refused to reform the program because Universal has lobbied against it. This program should end.
Eskamani noted that these giveaways are on top of a massive, $3.6 billion tax break the Florida Legislature recently gave to the state’s biggest corporations — and only the state’s biggest corporations. That includes roughly $540 million in corporate tax refunds given away in May 2020 and another $620 million in refunds to be doled out this spring, plus another $2.5 billion in savings from dramatically slashing Florida’s corporate tax rate from 5.5 percent to 3.5 percent through the end of 2021.
Corporations like Comcast, Walmart and Publix are now lobbying to make those tax breaks permanent — saving themselves billions more in the future, while robbing the state of money needed for investments in services that everyday Floridians desperately need, like affordable housing, mass transportation, healthcare and early childhood education.
“Working Floridians are struggling to afford rent, small businesses are fighting to keep their doors open, inflation is high and public agencies are struggling to meet the needs of our communities, ” Eskamani said. “Floridians need help, and we need to deliver it to them. And one of the ways we can do that is by eliminating wasteful corporate tax breaks that do nothing but pad the profits of politically influential corporations and instead use the money to deliver real relief to real people.”
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