The hits just keep on coming for Terry McAuliffe’s Greentech electric car company. Ryan Nobles reports that the company had a bit of a tax problem down in Mississippi:
Greentech Automotive was required to pay a property tax bill to Tunica County, MS, for more the $17,000 on February 1.
As of Monday, that bill had not been paid.
GTA has spent the last several months working with Tunica County officials to determine their tax liability on their Tunica County property, which has currently not been developed. The company is operating a smaller facility in Horn Lake, MS.
I spoke to Tunica County Tax Assessor Norma Anderson on Monday, who confirmed for me that the bill was still deliquent. Anderson, however, said despite the bill being in arrears, she was “looking into the issue” because on that same day it was brought to her attention that GTA’s Tunica project may be “tax exempt.”
However, on Wednesday, Anderson said they recieved the bill, paid in full, Tuesday morning.
So Greentech’s delinquent taxes were paid — after someone started inquiring about them. End of story, right? Not entirely. Greentech was supposed to be exempt from most local taxes for ten years, according to the chamber of commerce. That exemption was tied to Greentech actually producing cars (and, supposedly, creating jobs).
Therefore, the county was correct in charging taxes on the current operation, which currently amounts to a small office space, because the assembly lines in Tunica have yet to produce anything.
According to McInerney, the earliest production will start in Tunica will be the end of 2013 or perhaps early 2014.
Welcome to the world of corporate incentives, where one hand doesn’t quite know what the other is doing.
For Mr. McAuliffe, though, this bureaucratic bungling shines further, unwanted, light on his car business, which seems to have produced few cars or jobs.
No wonder he quietly stepped away from it in December.
