A Stealth Tax Subsidy for Businesses Comes Under New Scrutiny (NYT)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/business/qualified-private-activity-bonds-come-under-new-scrutiny.html

March 4, 2013
A Stealth Tax Subsidy for Businesses Comes Under New Scrutiny
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH and LOUISE STORY

The last time the nation’s tax code was overhauled, in 1986, Congress tried to end a big corporate giveaway.

But this valuable perk — the ability to finance a variety of business projects cheaply with bonds that are exempt from federal taxes — has not only endured, it has grown, in what amounts to a stealth subsidy for private enterprise.

A winery in North Carolina, a golf resort in Puerto Rico and a Corvette museum in Kentucky, as well as the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the offices of both the Goldman Sachs Group and Bank of America Tower in New York — all of these projects, and many more, have been built using the tax-exempt bonds that are more conventionally used by cities and states to pay for roads, bridges and schools.

In all, more than $65 billion of these bonds have been issued by state and local governments on behalf of corporations since 2003, according to an analysis of Bloomberg bond data by The New York Times. During that period, the single biggest beneficiary of such securities was the Chevron Corporation, which last year reported a profit of $26 billion.