ICYMI: NYT: Tucked Into the Tax Bill, a Plan to Help Distressed America

Washington – U.S. Senator Tim Scott’s (R-SC) bipartisan Investing in Opportunity Act was included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a key provision that will help economically distressed communities. It incentivizes investment in economically distressed areas by allowing trillions of dollars in private capital to be used to encourage small businesses, support entrepreneurs, and to develop dilapidated properties in zip codes most in need of a resurgence.

The New York Times wrote about the provision; you can read the article in its entirety here.

Tucked Into the Tax Bill, a Plan to Help Distressed America 
New York Times
Jim Tankersley

The law creates “Opportunity Zones,” which will use tax incentives to draw long-term investment to parts of America that continue to struggle with high poverty and sluggish job and business growth. The provision is the first new substantial federal attempt to aid those communities in more than a decade. And it comes as a disproportionate share of economic growth has been concentrated in so-called superstar metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and New York.

If the zones succeed, they could help revitalize neighborhoods and towns that are starved for investment.

[…]

The zones were included in the tax law by Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who was born into poverty in North Charleston, and based on a bill he co-sponsored in 2017 with several Democrats. The effort to create the zones was pushed by an upstart Washington think tank, the Economic Innovation Group, and its patron, the tech mogul Sean Parker, of Napster and Facebook fame, who enlisted Mr. Scott and others to sponsor the legislation.

Mr. Scott said that he had discussed the plan with Mr. Trump and that the president had later spoken approvingly of it.