Estimating the Economic Impacts of Tax Increment Financing Districts [October 2024]

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts are a type of economic development tool in which cities use a property tax increment to help finance development projects. A property tax increment is the amount of property tax generated above a base level, which is established when the city creates the district. We contacted the 10 largest cities in Kansas to generate a list of past and present TIF districts. From this list, we selected 6 districts to evaluate their economic costs and benefits. We selected 2 districts from Wichita, and 1 district each from Kansas City, Olathe, Topeka, and Salina. For each of these districts, we estimated the impacts they had on property values, taxes, development, employment, and crime. We also evaluated whether the costs to the city were recovered timely for these districts. We found that 3 of 6 districts did not recover their costs timely. Further, we found that most of these TIF districts likely experienced economic benefits from increased property values and taxes, increased development, or increased jobs. However, we were unable to directly compare these benefits to the costs because they could not be readily quantified. Whether a TIF district was worth its financial costs is often subjective and project-dependent. We also evaluated the school districts where these 6 TIF districts were located to determine what financial costs they may have imposed on those school districts. We found that all 6 TIF districts were too small in scale to have a significant negative impact on school district funding.