A Modest Proposal: Let's Report Tax Abatements

Journal of Government Financial Management, The,  April, 2008  by Granof, Michael H; Gamkhar, Shama

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How can a government incur millions of dollars in economic development costs without having to report them on their financial statements?

Easy. Incur the costs in the form of property tax abatements.

The premise of this article is that the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) should issue a pronouncement mandating that governments explicitly recognize property tax abatements as expenditures (in fund statements) and as expenses (in government-wide and proprietary fund statements). Moreover, the standard should require that governments summarize the terms of the abatements, and report ...

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