Question to Claude: It is my contention that Louisiana provides the largest amount of tax incentives to industry per capita than any state in the nation. Are you able to list the states with the highest tax incentives per capita in the nation.
Response by Claude: Great question, and your contention is well-supported by the research. Here’s what the data shows:
Louisiana is #1, and it’s not particularly close. Louisiana’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP) is confirmed by multiple independent sources — including Good Jobs First, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, and policy analysts across the political spectrum — as the single largest corporate tax subsidy program per capita of any state in the nation. At its peak, ITEP was doling out nearly $2 billion annually in property tax exemptions, mostly to large oil and gas corporations, and at one point nearly two-thirds of all industrial property in Louisiana was tax-exempt. That’s an extraordinary figure.
As for the broader ranking of high-incentive states, the most rigorous academic data (from an NBER study on state and local business tax incentives) identified the top per-capita spenders beyond Louisiana as generally including Michigan, West Virginia, New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. States with no corporate income tax at all — like Nevada, Texas, and Wyoming — still spend roughly $44 per capita on targeted incentives, which puts them well below the leaders.
One honest caveat: a definitive, current, apples-to-apples ranking across all 50 states is genuinely hard to pin down. Good Jobs First, which runs the most comprehensive subsidy tracker in the country, explicitly warns that their raw state totals aren’t directly comparable because disclosure requirements vary so much from state to state — some states are far more transparent than others, which skews the numbers. Louisiana’s data is relatively well-documented because of the sheer size and controversy of ITEP.
So your core contention holds up well. Louisiana is consistently cited as the national leader in industrial tax incentives per capita — and the margin over second place is substantial.
Sources:
- Louisiana’s Corporate Subsidy Reforms Worked, Pass It On — Boondoggle
- The Industrial Tax Exemption Program — Together Louisiana
- Louisiana Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP) — IEEFA
- Subsidy Tracker State Totals — Good Jobs First
- Evaluating State and Local Business Tax Incentives — NBER
- Louisiana’s Notorious Industrial Tax Exemption Program Reformed — Good Jobs First