Last year, Missouri’s General Assembly passed and the governor signed legislation that would provide $1.7 billion in tax incentives to Boeing conditional on the company locating all or part of the assembly plant for the 777 aircraft in Missouri. In January 2014, Boeing reached a deal with the key unions in the state of Washington and decided to continue manufacturing the Boeing 777 there.
In this post-mortem review, the emphasis will be on the process used to justify the Missouri tax incentive package. In particular, the governor proclaimed that this deal would generate an additional $2.9 billion in state revenues, thus more than paying for the costs of the tax incentive package. Quantitative analysis is imperative for a society to make good public policy decisions. Unfortunately, it is imperative that transparency is part of the quantitative analysis. In short, how did the governor arrive at the $2.9 billion figure?
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