South Carolina Public Schools Lost $534 Million Dollars to Corporate Tax Breaks in FY 2021
Greg LeRoy at goodjobs@goodjobsfirst.org or 202–494–0888
Arlene Martínez at arlene@goodjobsfirst.org or 202–232–1616
Annual Losses Growing at $50M per year since 2017
South Carolina’s public schools reported $534 million in revenues lost to corporate tax abatements in FY 2021, an increase of 65% compared to just four years earlier.
In the five years such reporting has been required, South Carolina schools have lost a total of $2.2 billion.
No other state in the nation reports that much school revenue is lost to corporations. It means less money for education, public health, emergency medical assistance, community centers, roads, sanitation, and other vital services.
Read the full report.
Alarmingly, these abatements from already-underfunded South Carolina schools show no signs of slowing down: Annual reported losses have been growing by $50 million per year since tax-break disclosures began in 2017, for a cumulative five-year total of $2.2 billion.
As the costliest local public service, school districts in South Carolina typically lose even five or six times as much as the county, even though the county controls the abatement awards.
The highest-losing school district in the state, Berkeley County, reported $84 million in FY 2021 alone — about double the loss it reported in 2017. By contrast, 2% pay raises for every teacher in the district (who makes less than $50,000 per year after 10 years of experience), would cost $4.5 million.
Not only does Berkeley County top the state, it ranks №3 in the nation — the only two districts that abated more revenue were the Hillsboro 1j District in Oregon and Philadelphia City Schools in Pennsylvania, according to a Good Jobs First analysis of available data.
The Chester County School District loses, on average, more than $1,000 per student annually in tax abatements. The nonprofit’s analysis of state records identified that lost revenues there have more than tripled since 2017. Voters recently voted down a school bond referendum in Chester County for the third time in a row.
South Carolina’s counties are known for subsidizing industrial development on a large scale and over a long period. In addition, these programs — known as Fee in Lieu of Taxes, Special Source Revenue Credit, and Multi-County Industrial Park — disproportionately benefit large corporations. BMW and Google, for example, are among past recipients.
Two-thirds of the school districts in South Carolina that have at least five years’ worth of data are losing more revenue over time. Among them are several disadvantaged districts such as those in Chester, Dillon, and Dorchester counties. Moreover, South Carolina’s top-losing school districts have higher child poverty than the state average, which is already higher than most other states.
The study recommends four ways to counteract long-term disinvestment in public education:
1) Shield public K-12 tax revenues from all tax abatement awards, as is done in Florida
2) Mandate advance disclosure of proposed abatement deals to enable public debate and community benefit agreements
3) Require counties to disclose deal-specific, company-specific performance reports on every project for the life of its abatement
4) Publish regular performance audits on the effectiveness of each subsidy program
Good Jobs First https://goodjobsfirst.org/sc-public-schools-lost-534m-to-corporate-tax-breaks-in-fy-2021/
