Fort Wayne adjusts tax abatement policy

The changes affect “run-of-the-mill service industries” and businesses like dentists and law offices because most of their services are delivered locally.

The changes put an emphasize on attracting businesses from outside of the community, Jehl said, specifically high-paying “footloose” industries like high-tech or manufacturing that could set up shop anywhere.

“Our goal should be to try to create a stable, predictive, business-friendly environment and you do so by offering tax abatements to ‘footloose’ businesses [that we are competing for with literally every other community in the world],” he said.

Additional changes to the tax abatement policy include extending vacant building tax abatements from one year to two; requiring employers to pay workers $5,000 more per year to receive the same amount of points on an abatement application; and wage scale adjustments for greater incentives to high-paying jobs.