Massachusetts

State lawmakers in Massachusetts have doubled the number of Economic Target Areas to 40, allowing more businesses to have access to less of a tax burden. Bureaucrats like to tout the success of these types of progams, but it should not be surprising that business owners would want a break from being highly taxed by the state. They also avoid the issue of what gives them the right to decide what businesses and localities deserve state tax breaks. The whole system is an inefficiently operated monopoly on the lowering of tax burdens.

It's also a wonder how these lawmakers come up with statistics like this one, reported in the Milford Daily News:

The sponsor of the bill, Sen. Harriette L. Chandler, D-Worcester, hopes more communities can benefit from this extra incentive. The state put $66.2 million into ETAs between 1995 and 2004. In return, the program netted $66.4 million in economic development related to some 50,000 jobs, Chandler said.

"ETAs help spur economic development and create jobs in communities most in need," said Chandler.

Actually, ETAs are an easy for politicians like Ms. Chandler to suggest to a naive public that it was they who created the jobs, not the actual owner of the business.