News of the latest round of big-government handouts to subsidize capitalism in South Dakota (including a million bucks to Manitou for expanding its factories in Madison and Yankton) gets me paging through the full list of tax rebates the state has handed out this year through its Reinvestment Payment Program—basically letting businesses get out of paying taxes for doing the other things businesses are supposed to do: expand, hire, and compete. And I notice that Gevo’s massive investment in making jet fuel from corn in Lake Preston is getting a huge tax kickback.
Colorado-based Gevo appears to have four renewable fuel projects underway in Lake Preston, and this fall each has received over a million dollars in Reinvestment Payment Program grants:
- Gevo Net-Zero, LLC, renewable fuel: $12,294,059.
- Lakeside Biogas, LLC, renewable fuel: $1,160,085.14.
- Dakota Renewable Hydrogen, LLC, hydrogen production facility: $3,351,400.
- Kingsbury County Wind Fuel, LLC, wind energy facility: $2,044,500.
Hydrogen—hey! Are we going to make fuel for fusion?!
That $18.85-million tax handout to Gevo’s operations is intended to support 111 FTEs with average wages of $50/hour at the main Gevo Net-Zero facility and $37–$38/hour in the three smaller operations.
Now remember, these rebates are meant give the company a break on the sales and use tax it would pay on building its projects. The Governor’s Office of Economic Development says these tax breaks “greatly increas[e]” the viability of these projects, even though sales and use tax only constitute a single-digit percentage of the building cost.
Of course, the state has recognized the great value of this single-digit-percentage tax break to corporations for years. It’s funny that the Governor has only recently, in the last three months, realized the great value of a single-digit-percentage tax break to regular working people buying groceries.
Speaking of pay to play, has the Noem administration published the list of Future Fund recipients? The Pierre Capital Journal used to do it but not for years.
There is this but the Pierre paper used to cross reference the list with Republican donors to the Governor’s Club.
https://sdgoed.com/public-records/future-fund/
It takes money to make money and who has more money in SD than the state? Sure. It’s communistic but not to the point of pain.
Manitou from France and RotoMold from Texas also got a million each.
Will these tax breaks in any way harm school funding in Lake Preston?
Burning food grown with forever chemicals in a state where the Chinese ring-necked pheasant is the canary in the corn mine. Like wiping your assets with a hula hoop: it’s endless.
I understand and agree with these breaks for small businesses.
These large investment projects should have a budget contingency set up that far exceed these tax breaks. If these large investment projects need these types of breaks, then they are not likely to make it.
Big businesses use these tax breaks that have been developed by governmental entities to just blackmail the governmental entities. (i.e., You do not give me a tax break I’m going elsewhere, or xyz is willing to give me more, so up you tax break or we are going to build in xyz.)