Tax Increases For NJ Urban Enterprise Zones

Excerpts

For years, New Jersey's Urban Enterprise Zone program has given tax incentives to businesses in dozens of urban areas to boost lagging local economies. Businesses in the designated zones get financial assistance, subsidized unemployment insurance, and energy sales tax exemptions.
They've also been allowed to level only half of the state's sales tax on their products to help attract customers.
But the program expired at the beginning of the year for the five cities that signed on first, in 1986. The state informed the businesses there that they were no longer allowed to offer a 3.5 percent reduced sales tax and were now required to levy the state's full 6.875 percent sales tax. The latter is the new state rate -- down from 7 percent -- which took effect Jan. 1.

Five cities in the Garden State -- Bridgeton, Camden, Newark, Plainfield, and Trenton -- braced for   a sales-tax increase. And similar cities could see the same in coming years if Christie and lawmakers don't come to a compromise regarding the future of a three-decades-old program on the brink of extinction.

Entire article at
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/01/5_nj_cities_see_sales_tax_hike_as_christie_sits_on_bill.html