Over the last 10 years, the Hawaii State Legislature has tended to hand out various carrots to entice taxpayers to engage in a variety of activities from construction to the development of high tech businesses.
While some may say that the tax incentives did stimulate these various activities by pointing to the current robust economy, there is probably no one who can definitively prove that the incentives are the reason that the economy is doing well.
This is because no data has been collected with respect to the number of jobs or businesses that have been created as a result of these tax incentives. What we do know is that the state has had to forgo tax revenues as a result of these incentives. And even that is a guesstimate because the claims for these credits are made on a lag basis. So it may be years before anyone can really figure out how much was