The incentives you have to ask for — before you commit.
State and local governments compete for jobs and capital investment, and they pay for it — with cash grants, tax abatements, credits, and infrastructure support. But unlike a statutory credit, negotiated incentives are not claimed on a return. They are negotiated in advance, and the leverage disappears the moment you announce the deal.
Schedule a call →Discretionary money, awarded to whoever asks properly.
Beyond the credits written into the tax code, states, counties, cities, and utilities maintain discretionary incentive programs to attract and retain economic activity. These can include cash grants, property tax abatements, payroll rebates, sales tax exemptions on equipment, workforce training funds, utility rate reductions, and infrastructure improvements. The programs are real and the money is budgeted — but it is awarded, not claimed.
The critical difference is timing. Statutory credits can be captured after the fact. Negotiated incentives generally cannot. The entire premise is that the incentive influenced your decision — so once you have signed the lease, broken ground, or announced the hiring, the jurisdiction has no reason to pay you for a decision you already made. The window opens when you start evaluating, and it closes when you commit.
Worth a look if you are about to expand, relocate, or invest.
- Adding 20 or more new or retained jobs at a single location
- Capital investment above $5 million
- Building, expanding, or relocating a facility
- Evaluating multiple sites or states for a project
- Consolidating operations into a new location
- Considering a move that a jurisdiction would want to prevent
Retention counts too. If you are weighing whether to keep an operation where it is, that is a live negotiation — jurisdictions will pay to keep jobs, not just to attract them. The mistake is treating an expansion as a real estate decision and only thinking about incentives after the site is chosen.
Leverage has an expiration date.
Real dollars, not deductions
Cash grants, abatements, and rebates are money and cost avoided — not a percentage of a deduction against income you may or may not have.
Competitive tension
When more than one jurisdiction wants the project, the offers improve. That leverage only exists before you commit.
Layered programs
State, county, city, and utility programs can often be stacked. Knowing which ones combine is most of the value.
We bring it to the table and manage it end to end.
Assess
We look at the project early — before commitment — and identify which programs it is likely to qualify for.
Position
Applications and site comparisons are prepared and the project is presented to the jurisdictions in the right sequence.
Negotiate
Terms are negotiated across state, local, and utility programs, and the offers are compared on a net basis.
Comply
Agreements carry job and investment commitments. We help track and report against them so the incentive is not clawed back.
Bring us in early. It is the whole game.
There is no version of this that works retroactively. The single most common and most expensive mistake is calling about incentives after the site is selected, the lease is signed, or the expansion is announced — at which point the leverage is gone and so is most of the money. If an expansion, relocation, or major capital project is anywhere on your horizon, that is the moment for the conversation. Same standard we bring to everything: optimize aggressively, but never past the line.
Find out what your next project could be worth.
A short call early in the process is enough to tell whether there are incentives worth pursuing — and how much leverage you still have.
Schedule a call →