Investors in 32 areas of Maine will get new federal tax benefits intended to bring jobs and investment to some of the state’s poorest parts.
The federal Opportunity Zones program allows investors in some census tracts to avoid paying federal capital gains tax on earnings from those areas.
Doug Ray with the Maine Department of Economic And Community Development says Gov. Paul LePage made the final decisions, and that the choices were made on the economic conditions in those areas and on whether they had factors in place that might make investment more likely, or benefit existing investors.
“A lot of these tracts will have vacant commercial sites, whether it was because of a paper mill closure in recent years, or any kind of commercial site that may have a likelihood for reinvestment and new opportunity,” he says. “It’s designed to try to spur economic development by providing tax benefits to investors in these tracts.”
For example, the governor picked census tracts that include the former sites of paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket, Bath Iron Works and the Front Street Shipyard. There were no sites in Franklin, Lincoln or Knox Counties.
