To accurately measure an incentive’s results, states need to consider whether businesses receiving benefits would have made the same investments had the tax break not existed. When the Minnesota Legislative Auditor’s office studied the state’s Job Opportunity Building Zones program, for example, it found that about 80 percent of the jobs created by companies receiving incentives would have been created even without the help.
When I tallied all corporate facility investment projects across all industries that qualified for Site Selection magazine’s Conway Projects Database in 2024, the sector that showed the most dramatic leap upward was business & financial services, increasing from 772 projects in 2023 to 954 in 2024 (a 24% spike).