Soon-To-Be Kansan Company Gets $5 Million to Move A Half Mile
The Kansas-Missouri economic border war reached a new level of absurdity with SelectQuote Senior Insurance Services. After earlier examples such as Teva Neuroscience moving only a few miles across the state line for incentives, SelectQuote was preparing to relocate essentially a few blocks—from Kansas City, Missouri, to nearby Leawood, Kansas—with roughly $5 million in incentives attached.
The move illustrated why these programs do so little for the metropolitan economy as a whole. Jobs and offices can cross a political boundary without creating comparable new regional economic activity, while taxpayers on both sides subsidize the competition.
Local critics made the same point: businesses that do not move end up bearing more of the tax burden while mobile companies are rewarded for shifting addresses. That is not a sustainable growth strategy.
The better approach is to stop selecting individual winners and losers through tax incentives and instead make the general tax environment more competitive for every business.
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