Outlaw Tax Abatements for Retail Stores

Retail establishments like Wal-Mart get abatement of taxes to locate stors in particular communities.  They play communities against each other.  In actuality, they usually make their location decision independent of the abatement and simply take it as an additional gain.  If, at the state level, such tax abatements are outlawed, the communities will be on an even playing field and will not lose property tax revenue.

Tax abatements on manufacturing plants are a little more complex.  In actuality, such abatements are probably never more than a tie breaker in the location decision.  However, a law prohibiting them would bring on a large public outcry.  In order to do this, there would likely have to be a regional agreement among states or a federal law.