Kansas City Council Prepares Hefty Tax Incentive Package to Attract Freightquote.com

By Gabriel Circiog, Associate Editor

The Kansas City Council is preparing a hefty tax incentive package to lure Freightquote.com to cross the state line, The Kansas City Business Journal reports.

The current headquarters of the online shipping company is in Lenexa at 16025 West 113th Street, but Kansas City proposes a $65 million Chapter 100 bond issuance which includes waivers of typical conditions of the city’s policy regarding these incentives.

Freightquote has been the most recent company involved in the bi-state border war since the March announcement that it was searching for a new location. The company has focused its search mainly on the southern metro area, where most of its employees reside, and it has ruled out downtown. Bearing in mind that Freightquote currently employs 960 employees, and it plans to hire another 200 within two years, the end result of the tug-of-war between Missouri and Kansas over the shipping company will represent an important achievement for either victor.

The Kansas City Council has proposed a new 200,000-square-foot building located at Carondelet Drive and State Line Road, near St. Joseph Medical Center, as the new headquarters for Freightquote. The city’s offer would abate 100 percent of incremental increases in real property taxes over 23 years and wouldn’t require any payments in lieu of taxes. Full abatement for 15 years would be given on personal property taxes, with 50 percent PILOT payments starting after five years of the abatement. To make the offer even more attractive, the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Commission of Kansas City plans to propose a new TIF district for Freightquote that would redirect, for 23 years, 50 percent of economic activity taxes generated at the Freightquote site back to the development.

Besides the economic development incentives package proposed by the city, state-level incentives such as Missouri Quality Jobs, state sales tax exemptions and Missouri Build are also expected to be offered.

The economic development incentive was sponsored by Kansas City Mayor Sly James and council members John Sharp and Scott Taylor.

Logo Courtesy of: www.freightquote.com