HAMILTON (Mercer) Gov. Phil Murphy enacted a law Thursday authorizing nearly $14.5 billion in tax breaks, loans and grants for businesses, part of a long-stalled economic plan he says will support “thousands of good jobs.”
Murphy signed the law in a ceremony outside Carella’s Chocolates & Gifts in Hamilton to highlight that the wide-ranging plan includes $50 million for a Main Street Recovery Finance program providing grants, loans and loan guarantees to small businesses.
“After all, incentives are set aside only for big corporations, right? Well starting today, that could not be more wrong. That’s the old way of thinking. That doesn’t mean that it won’t apply necessarily to big corporations, but the days when it only applied to big ones are over,” Murphy said.
On December 21, 2020, the New Jersey Legislature passed the “
New Jersey Economic Recovery Act of 2020” (the “Economic Recovery Act” or the Act ), an omnibus piece of legislation which provides support for various programs and policies related to jobs, property development, food deserts, community partnerships, and small and early-stage businesses, among others. The bill now heads to Governor Murphy, who is expected to sign it into law.
In an effort to bolster development, the Economic Recovery Act creates, among other things, various tax credit programs which will provide qualifying taxpayers with tax credits for project financing gaps for: (i) qualified redevelopment projects, (ii) rehabilitating qualified historic New Jersey properties, (iii) remediation costs for qualified brownfield redevelopment projects, and (iv) establishing and retaining new supermarkets and grocery stores in food desert communities.