When we think of tax break agreements that pick winners and losers in local business, we get – in the recent words of former FBI Director James Comey on the bureau’s possible affect on the 2016 presidential election – “mildly nauseous.”
Many Chattanooga and Hamilton County businesses exist and have existed, and have been consistent in hiring and pay and community involvement, and never had a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) agreement.
That said, we understand why they’re done and the competition for business that forces such tax breaks.
Earlier this week, one such PILOT was approved by the Chattanooga City Council and the Hamilton County Commission for HomeServe (a United Kingdom-based company that sells major household repair plans to homeowners), which plans to expand both its physical presence and its number of employees.
The company first located in Chattanooga in 2010 and expanded in 2013, with one official calling its location here “a no-brainer” and a city that “embraced us more than any other city we looked at.”