EDITORIAL
Taxpayers deserve look at the tax credit details

While the Legislature did a fair job of tightening up some of the more egregious loopholes in the Act 221 high-tech tax credit bill, it flopped on the issue of public disclosure in this controversial law.

The net result is that the public and policy-makers will continue to have a hard time making a reasoned cost-benefit analysis of the investments prompted by the measure.

The best hope now is that officials in the state tax and business departments can accomplish administratively what lawmakers were unable to do legislatively.

Here's how it could work:

The revised law tightens up the definition of what a qualified high-tech research company is. It will be harder for marginal high-tech operations to qualify for Act 221 investments.

Further, before any company can seek such investments, it must file a formal request for certification with the Tax Department, outlining how much it expects to receive in investments and how much will be spent on qualified high-tech work. That's an improvement over today's voluntary system.

The Legislature could have required that this certification information be made public, but it did not. By the same token, however, the bill does not specifically forbid release of such information.

Assuming the Tax Department can get legal clearance that these certification letters are not privileged "tax return" documents, it might be able to forward them to the Department of Business for cost-benefit analysis and public disclosure.

This only makes sense. Taxpayers are supporting "high tech" businesses with millions in tax dollars. They have a right to clear, focused information on what those tax dollars are buying in the form of jobs and economic development.