Show Me the Incentives

From onboarding new team members to purchasing new equipment, Missouri has a variety of incentive programs available to help businesses with their unique needs. With customized incentives available for businesses looking to expand or relocate to the state, Missouri makes it easier for companies to achieve every goal. 

The team at Missouri Partnership, the state’s economic development organization, works closely with businesses to identify what they need to grow in the state and create quality jobs. Below are a few of the state’s more popular offerings and how they work.

Missouri Works 

The Missouri Works program is designed to support companies considering the state as a location for their next relocation or expansion investment. The program offers a mix of automatic and discretionary benefits through a 100% retention of state withholding tax, and/or refundable, transferable, and sellable tax credits for qualified companies. 

Missouri One Start

Missouri One Start is the state’s primary workforce development program, providing businesses with comprehensive pre-employment and customized training solutions. The Missouri One Start Network works directly with businesses to provide custom training programs. Companies benefit from one-on-one recruitment services and pre- and post- employment training in a variety of settings. 

Missouri BUILD Program

Large projects that meet certain investment and job creation requirements may be eligible to receive assistance through the Missouri BUILD (Business Use Incentive for Large-Scale Development) program. One of the state’s more selective and competitive incentives, BUILD uses bond financing for public and private infrastructure or new capital improvements of the business at the project location. BUILD offers refundable state tax credits issued to the company that are equal to the annual debt service payments on the bond over a 10 to 15-year period.  

Data Center Sales Tax Exemption Program 

The Data Center Sales Tax Exemption Program incentivizes the location and expansion of data centers in the state of Missouri by providing an exemption of the sales and utility taxes associated with a variety of activities necessary to build a new facility or expand an existing facility.

Benefits of the program include state and local sales tax exemption on construction or rehab materials, machinery and equipment purchases, and utility costs. The benefit period and minimum qualification thresholds depend on if the facility is new to Missouri, or an existing facility expanding in the state.

Chapter 100 Sales 

Tax Exemption 

Chapter 100 authorizes cities and counties to issue industrial development bonds to finance a wide variety of commercial facilities and equipment, and to offer real and/or personal property tax abatement, sales tax exemption on construction materials and sales tax exemption on tangible personal property.

Automotive Incentives 

Missouri’s new automotive incentives grant offers up to $25 million in tax credits to automotive manufacturers investing $500 million in plant upgrades. The incentive requires employers to retain their current workers and can include an additional $25 million in tax credits if they invest another $250 million. 

Opportunity Zones

Missouri has 161 Opportunity Zones in the state, encouraging long-term investment and job creation in low-income areas. Some of the primary benefits of locating in an Opportunity Zone include temporary deferral of owed capital gains, forgiveness of 10% of owed gains after five years and an additional 5% after seven years, along with the ability to reset the basis value of the building after 10 years without owing capital gains on the increased valuation.