KENDALLVILLE — It's going on five years and Kendallville is looking to tweak its guidelines for when and how they grant tax breaks to businesses looking to expand.
The biggest changes? Job creation is back as a requirement, the city is considering dropping 10-year abatements and it's creating a separate table for real property.
The Kendallville Economic Development Advisory Committee spent several months in 2022 discussing possible tweaks to its guidelines, which were last updated in late 2018.
Tax abatements allow a company to phase in the amount of taxes they pay each year on new buildings or new equipment. The first year, they pay no taxes, but in following years the amount phases in by a percentage based on the length of the abatement. For example, with a five-year abatement, the business pays 20 percent in year one, 40 percent in year two, and so on.
Tax abatements generally save companies around half of the taxes they would have otherwise paid during the term.
At that time, Kendallville had added in new requirements for employers to hit certain marks with job wages, but the city had completely dropped requirements that employers create new jobs.
Job creation was dumped as a requirement because employers were majorly struggling to find new workers and fill open positions as the labor market was tightening. That problem hasn't gone away and actually has gotten worse as county and state unemployment remains at historical lows and hundreds of positions in the county...
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