Last day of Georgia’s legislature and they vote to give tax breaks to mall developers. Just what we need. http://bit.ly/eRjhxy

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Update 9:49 a.m. 4/15/2011

Yesterday I relied on the article cited above when writing this post. The Augusta Chronicle article said:

The Senate Finance Committee voted  unanimously to amend House Bill 234 by adding wording that will give the  developers of resorts, amusement parks and large malls sales-tax money to cover  as much as one-fourth of their construction costs.

After reviewing the legislation as posted on the state website here I think the newspaper article mischaracterized the part about large malls. The bill actually attempts to exclude malls with the following wording:

A tourism attraction shall not include the following:

(A) Facilities that are primarily devoted to the retail sale of goods, shopping centers, restaurants, or movie theaters

Based on my review of the actual legislation I believe my characterization was also incorrect and inaccurate. I am not a fan of targeted tax incentives thrown into unrelated bills and there is still plenty of wiggle room for some malls to benefit from the bill but I do believe I erroneously called the bill a tax break for mall developers.

I apologize for the error and will be much more cautious when relying on newspaper articles from established print media sources in the future.