U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), Chairman of the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee and New Jersey’s only member of that tax-writing committee, today reacted to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examining the opportunity zones tax incentive program. Following concerns over zone designations and the lack of reliable information on zone investments, the GAO looked specifically at the zone designation process, the state experience with zones, the characteristics of zone investors and investments and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) procedures to ensure opportunity zone incentive recipients are fulfilling their tax obligations.
“I welcome the GAO’s contribution to the research being conducted on the opportunity zone program, which unfortunately has been the subject of a number of reports of huge windfalls for investors from projects not meeting the stated goals of the tax incentive. Lack of available data on investments being made in zones across the nation is both a problem for oversight and a liability for the government,” said Rep. Pascrell. “Opportunity zones incentives were created to reinvigorate impoverished communities and were not intended to merely be a cash cow for wealthy investors. Since the still-new program has fewer guardrails than prior place-based tax incentive programs, it is essential that Congress and our tax-writing committees exercise their oversight responsibilities meticulously. The Congress and the Treasury Department must both take action to ensure those investors seeking to utilize the program are serving in-need communities and also paying their fair share in taxes.”
The opportunity zones program was created as part of the GOP tax scam law of 2017 to “spur economic development and job creation in distressed communities” throughout the United States. But the program has come under fire for pervasive abuse by wealthy Americans. Responding to an October 2019 report that the program was being influenced by a disgraced financier associate of then U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Pascrell demanded answers on possible abuses.
A copy of the GAO’s full report is available here, and a summary is available here.
Original source can be found here.
