Missouri

A usual story on this blog consists of a large corporation or major industry being able to attain a significant tax break to the chagrin of small business owners. So when Missouri Governor Matt Blunt signed a law prohibiting discretionary tax breaks from going to corporate-owned ethanol and biodiesel plants, one wants to believe that Governor Blunt is offering a level playing field in this new industry.

But if it turns out that those plants that are owned by a majority of farmers are able to get such breaks, in addition to their unique ability to receive subsidies from the Missouri Agriculture Department, that's just favoring the small guy over the big corporations (to paraphrase a commenter on the Joplin Globe's website), right?

It is naive to believe that this scheme is simply for the benefit of small farmers and Missouri citizens as a whole. It would be interesting to see the average income of the farmers that are taking advantage of ethanol and biodiesel incentives and compare that with the corporations that have attempted to attain the same tax breaks. The following will hopefully illustrate my point:

The new policy would not appear to exclude tax breaks from going to a proposed ethanol plant in which the governor's brother is an investor - though it is not clear if the plant is seeking any discretionary tax breaks.

Show Me Ethanol LLC wants to build an $80 million ethanol plant in Carroll County. It is being structured to be owned by a majority of farmers, though one of the investors is a non-farming company called Central Missouri Biofuels LLC, which the governor's brother Andy Blunt helped found.