By Tom Nolan
Over the past year, Georgia has made a number of changes to their tax credit line-up. Two recent house bills resulted in three of the more prominent changes.
2016 HB 936 Starting with tax years beginning January 1, 2017, Georgia now offers a $2,500 credit for each qualified parolee who was granted parole within 12 months prior to being hired. The employee must work full- time, and the business can take the credit after the employee has worked at least 40 weeks over the course of a year. Businesses are limited to claiming the credit once per employee, up to a total of $50,000 per tax year, and any unused credit may be carried over to the next three tax years. In addition to introducing the new parolee hiring tax credit, HB 936 also made a change to the traditional job tax credit. The state now requires that the wages of each new job created must be above the average wage of the county that has the lowest average wage of any county in the state. Prior to the change, the average wage of the new jobs had to be above the average wage of the county that had the lowest average wage of any county in the state. For the 2016 tax year, the county with the lowest wage was Glascock with a weekly wage of $471 ($24,492 annualized wage). 2017 HB 265 In 2017, the state enacted HB 265, which makes adjustments to the quality jobs tax credit. The legislation adds definitions for “Qualified Project”, “Qualified Investment Property”, and “Qualified Investment Property Requirement”. In addition, the bill also allows for two years for meeting the requirement for creating 50 new quality jobs, previously set to just one year. Bottom Line Georgia continues to improve the value of incentives to businesses looking to locate or expand in the state. Equifax Workforce Solutions can provide more information about Georgia incentives, or incentives for any other state. Our Location Based Incentive Management solution leverages our unique data, experience, and expertise to help employers reduce costs and maximize savings. Equifax provides a comprehensive solution built on accountability and program performance management to help employers fully realize incentives. Did you know that Equifax can also help manage your Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) program? According to the Department of Labor (DOL), WOTC certifications in Georgia increased over 100% from 2014 to 2015. Are you realizing the full value of your hiring tax credits? Equifax offers a comprehensive service to help you maximize WOTC while reducing administrative burden, and improving the user experience. Contact us to learn more about how our mobile-optimized, customized, and innovative screening processes help employers to improve identification of WOTC eligible employees while our effortless documentation fulfillment provides all needed certification documentation in nearly 97% of cases (from full year 2015 Equifax certification data), without further burdening your managers and employees. Contact us to learn how Equifax can help your organization. Download a PDF version of this bulletin.