In Fiscal Year 2015, the Maryland Department of Commerce awarded projects that assisted 521 businesses, resulting in over 27,000 jobs at an average annual wage of $64,000 and annual State tax revenues of $94.5 million. The Consolidated Incentives Performance Report FY2015 provides a comprehensive measuring of the various finance programs and tax incentives administered by the Department to support these projects.
Executive Summary
What Types of Incentives?
Commerce incentives totaled $141,660,651 in FY 2015 for projects that assisted 521 businesses. Commerce invested $31 million in direct assistance and $35 million in tax credits.
Which Industries Received Support?
Manufacturing received the largest dollar amount with $68 million in total assistance, including loans, loan guarantees and tax credits. Professional, scientific, and technical services companies received $15 million in total assistance. The information sector, including film production received $16 million in assistance as did health care technology and services.
The Impact of Incentive Programs
The program evaluation is organized according to the general economic development objectives of the programs:
- Job creation and retention
- Support for Local economic development
- Leveraging private sector investment in economic development
- Assistance to small, disadvantaged and minority businesses and/or underserved areas
- Promoting startups and innovation through technology commercialization and investment
- Economic diversification through targeted growth industry promotion
The programs supported, retained or created 10,285 direct jobs. One-third of those were new jobs and two-thirds were retained jobs. Including spin-off jobs, the combined programs generated over 27,000 jobs and total annual wages of $1.7 billion, for an average annual wage of $64,000. The wages in turn generate $94.5 million in state tax revenues.
The evaluation was conducted by the Department’s Office of Research and Information Services based on the Department’s Finance Tracker data and program reports for settled projects receiving incentives in FY 2015.
