How Corporate Tax Incentives Rob Public School Budgets

Public schools in 28 states could have received nearly $2 billion in funds that instead were given away by state and local governments as corporate tax abatements last year, according to a new report from Good Jobs First. This amount—which, due to incomplete reporting, may only be a fraction of the total nationwide—was enough to have paid for more than 28,000 new teachers in 10 states, the researchers estimate. Instead, it went to attracting businesses.

“When we’ve talked to school board members and teacher unions, they’ve always known their districts were losing money,” said Scott Klinger, a co-author of the report: If corporations are given property tax-free, for instance, that lost revenue is obviously shaved from somebody’s budget. It’s the reason some residents of New York and Virginia are angry about the money their governments offered to Amazon. “But we never had numbers on how much schools lost before,” he said. “We’ve never had even a guess of it.”