Tax credits for seasonal workers at Foxconn?

Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh) thinks the Walker administration included a huge loophole in its contract with Foxconn. The contract’s language, he says, opens the door to the company hiring workers for part of the year — for as little as a few days — and still claim tax credits for every dollar of capital expenditures. Foxconn claims it has incurred $350 million in capital costs, mostly for its facilities in Mount Pleasant in Racine County, which would be eligible for a 15 percent tax credit.

That means the company would collect $52.5 million from Wisconsin taxpayers while barely employing anyone.

How is that possible? The contract awards two kinds of credits. Employment tax credits are earned on a monthly basis for actual job hours worked. But the contract also awards tax credits for capital expenditures as long as the company has hired the required number of employees, including “partial-year employees,” by Dec. 31 of the previous year. The language allowing partial-year employees is used repeatedly, in three different paragraphs of the contract...