Last week we wrote about the State Tax Incentive Evaluations Database. Here we highlight one state’s efforts to share its own evaluations with interested citizens.

This month the Oklahoma Incentive Evaluation Commission received draft evaluations for 11 state tax incentives. The draft evaluations are all available for review and download here. Oklahoma Watch and NewsOK have summaries of the recommendations here and here.

Instead of repeating the findings, since they are easily accessible, in this article I want to highlight the way information is shared. The State of Oklahoma hosts a website dedicated to the Incentive Evaluation Commission at http://iec.ok.gov. Below is a screenshot of the homepage.

The site is straight-forward in describing the purpose of the Commission, sharing information about the Commission members and meetings, detailing the schedule and criteria for the evaluations, and providing evaluation and meeting documents for download and review.

For each tax incentive, a summary describes:

  • Program intent
  • Tax credit start and end dates
  • Program administrator
  • Statute synopsis
  • Financial impact
  • Benchmarking (where appropriate)
  • Recommended evaluation criteria

For those who are interested in the specifics of the program evaluations, draft reports for the following tax incentives are listed under Documents:

  • Tax Credit for Electricity Generated by Zero-Emission Facilities
  • Quality Events Program
  • Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit
  • Excise Tax Exemption on Aircraft Sales
  • Oklahoma Aerospace Engineering Incentives
    • Tax credit for aerospace employees
    • Tax credit for tuition reimbursement for aerospace employers
  • Oklahoma Capital Investment Board Programs
    • Venture Investment Program
    • Capital Access Program
  • Industrial Access Road Program
  • Five Year Ad Valorem Exemption for Manufacturing
  • Oklahoma Film Enhancement Rebate

This Commission was established in response to 2015 legislation with a mission “to produce objective evaluations of the State of Oklahoma’s wide array of economic incentives.” All incentives must be reviewed by the commission once every four years, and the reviews must recommend whether the incentives should be retained, reconfigured or repealed. Once the evaluations are reviewed and accepted, they will be formally submitted to the Governor and Legislature. The PFM Group prepared the evaluations.