EDA slowing down tax break payments for 68 companies this year.

Byline: Daniel J. Munoz

The state's Economic Development Authority has held off on paying incentives to 68 separate companies for taxes they paid in 2018 as the agency ramps ups scrutiny of New Jersey's now-expired, controversial corporate tax break program to make sure businesses are actually complying with tax credit agreements.

It is not clear how much money the EDA delayed paying under the Grow New Jersey program enacted in 2013 and the preceding Legacy Grow NJ program.

Under the Grow NJ program, companies had until April 30 to hand in paperwork for taxes paid in 2018 to receive tax-break payments, assuming theymet agreed-upon requirements.

Altogether the 68 companies were paid $175.5 million in 2018 for taxes they paid in 2017$151 million under the Grow NJ program and $24.4 million under the legacy program, according to documents obtained by NJBIZ.

The documents indicate that the EDA is "still reviewing all 2018 annual tax credits" as the reason for the delays in payments.

The EDA has also slowed down payments of six commercial projects under the Economic Redevelopment and Growth gap financing program, and eight residential projects. Last year the EDA paid out $3.8 million and $11.6 million respectively.

EDA Chief Executive Officer Tim Sullivan maintained the slowdown of payments was in response to the state comptroller's January audit, which found glaring holes in the EDA's oversight of the incentive program. According to the audit, the EDA over-awarded tax breaks for companies, or awarded incentives to companies which never should have received the incentives in the first place. Moreover, the EDA failed to make sure companies were compliant with the tax break agreement.

The tax breaks are paid out to companies over a 10-year period, and the annual payments are not made until the companies certify to the EDA that they met agreed-upon economic and job creation goals.

"As part of our commitment to ensuring taxpayers get what they were promised, we have made a number of improvements to our tax credit certification review process," Sullivan said in a Monday statement to NJBIZ.

Sullivan maintained that delays were not a "systematic move" by the agency to "delay tax incentive awards," and that the payments will be made to companies as soon as the EDA is "comfortable that all obligations have been met and can be documented."

He met criticism from lawmakers earlier Monday when he testified before the Senate economic incentive task force which...