Well, the budget still isn’t finished for the State of North Carolina, but the NC Senate has sent out a press release this morning touting their priorities.  They plan to redistribute the sales taxes collected by urban counties and give it to the rural (sorta like a modern day Robin Hood) as well as a new plan to give taxpayer dollars to private businesses….aka economic development.  Below is a press release about these plans….

Raleigh, N.C. – North Carolina Senate leaders unveiled a new economic development plan in the Senate Finance Committee Thursday that includes major compromises on efforts to recruit new jobs and businesses, deliver meaningful tax relief to existing businesses and reform outdated and unfair tax laws.
 
The compromise answers Gov. Pat McCrory’s call for additional job recruitment dollars and moves to the middle of the original House and Senate proposals. It extends the state Job Development Investment Grants (JDIG) program for an additional three years, while increasing the fund for grant awards to a maximum of $20 million per year. The bill also encompasses additional provisions found in earlier House and Senate proposals, including:

  • Creating a new economic development tool for attracting major manufacturing projects – like automobile and aerospace manufacturers – that commit to investing at least $750 million and creating at least 2,000 new North Carolina jobs.
  • Adopting additional safeguards and reporting requirements to ensure job recruitment dollars are administered responsibly and available throughout the entire year.
  • Encouraging economic growth in every part of the state by establishing more generous grants to companies that locate in poorer counties, which have historically received a disproportionately low level of support from state incentives programs.

“Senate and House Republicans have always agreed that encouraging job growth and providing tax relief are top priorities – we just sometimes differ on the details,” said Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham). “This bill represents a true compromise on some of this session’s most important goals that everyone should be able to embrace.”  
 
The plan also moves to calculating corporate income tax on the basis of a single sales factor over three years, removing the existing penalty on businesses that hire North Carolina workers or invest in local property and infrastructure. Currently, neighboring states like South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia have a competitive advantage over North Carolina because they use a single sales factor formula. And it incorporates a number of ideas included in the original House proposal, including the Datacenter Infrastructure Act and exempting passenger air carriers from business-to-business sales tax costs.
 
Finally, the plan compromises on efforts to correct the state’s unfair system for allocating sales tax dollars. It returns to the fairer system in place for a quarter of century prior to 2007 – before Democrat-led efforts stole and redistributed money from poor, rural counties to rich, urban counties. Under the fair system the bill returns to, 50 percent of sales tax revenues will be allocated based on where people live, with the remaining 50 percent allocated based on the county where a sale takes place. And the plan eliminates outdated and unfair “adjustment factors” that redistribute sales tax revenues to a handful of counties. The compromise addresses the concerns of urban areas by ensuring significant support for costs associated with providing services and infrastructure in large commercial centers, while still enabling citizens from all across the state to benefit from the sales tax dollars they spend.
 
“We simply believe that when someone spends their hard-earned tax dollars, those dollars should provide more benefit to their own family and their own community,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown (R-Onslow). “The current system forces North Carolinians from 83 counties to subsidize a select few, and this compromise will help all parts of the state.”
 
“While we have several more tax issues to tackle this session, I am pleased this compromise bill should settle a number of key issues and put us on a path to adjourn sooner,” said Senate Finance Committee Co-Chairman Bob Rucho (R-Mecklenburg).