Detroit:
GM and Bedrock to Reap Huge Tax Breaks for GM’s Move from the RenCen

Jun 17, 2024

In 2009, Michigan politicians granted General Motors huge tax breaks for supposedly providing jobs in the city of Detroit at its headquarters at the Renaissance Center, at least through 2029. Those tax breaks, called MEGA tax credits, allow GM to keep the money its employees at the RenCen would pay in state income taxes, which comes to 200 million dollars per year.

GM recently announced it plans to move at least some of those employees in 2025 to the new redevelopment of the old Hudson’s building.

Now it appears that not only will GM continue to reap those tax breaks for simply shifting those same jobs to another location within the city, but Bedrock, the company owned by Dan Gilbert which owns the new Hudson’s site, will also receive another 100 million dollars per year, assuming GM maintains the same number of jobs there as at the RenCen.

What nonsense! GM made almost 20 billion dollars a year in profits for each of the last three years and is on pace to make even more in 2024. It just announced it would pay out 6 billion dollars to buy back stock from its stockholders, on top of 10 billion dollars in stock buybacks it already announced last November! In other words, GM is collecting 200 million dollars a year from state taxpayers and handing it directly over to its stockholders.

All this in a city whose schools are deteriorating, and whose homeowners who haven’t lost their homes to mortgage or tax foreclosures struggle to find money to pay for necessary repairs on their homes!

It’s not hard to see that both city and state politicians are working for the interests of the corporations and the wealthy and not the working class and poor residents of Detroit.