Murphy admin to levy greater scrutiny on how tax breaks are bought, sold.

Byline: Daniel J. Munoz

The Murphy administration plans to roll out a website to track how the state's lucrative tax breaks are bought and sold, citing a lack of transparency in the second-hand market.

"With more than 70 percent of tax credits transferred to date, the need for additional oversight and monitoring is critical," State Treasurer Elizabeth Maher Muoio said in a Wednesday morning statement.

Most of the website will be an online database only viewable by the Economic Development Authority, - which oversees the incentives - the taxation division, and the entities that won the incentives.

The Treasury department's announcement comes hours after a NorthJersey.com report detailing the extent of the ancillary market for Grow New Jersey tax breaks, wherein recipients sell the incentives to companies that are typically subject to a much weaker levy of scrutiny and transparency.

"While the Division of Taxation oversaw the first transfer of a tax credit from the original applicant to another entity, it could not track any subsequent transfers of that certificate until it was physically redeemed against another taxpayer's liability," the treasury statement reads.

Since the New Jersey Economic Opportunity Act of 2013, the state has awarded over $7 billion under the Grow NJ tax breaks used to incentivize corporations to set up shop in New...