The Nerve

By RICK BRUNDRETT Once again, the state’s chief revenue forecasters have grossly overestimated the popularity of an income tax credit that legislators created with the 2017 gas-tax-hike law. In a Sept. 21 letter to Hartley Powell, director of the state Department of Revenue (DOR), Frank Rainwater, the S.C. Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office (RFA) director, […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Over the last five years, state agencies, including public colleges and a university hospital system, collected a total of nearly $95 million in past-due payments through deductions from state income-tax refunds, records reviewed by The Nerve show. A little-known state law, titled the “Setoff Debt Collection Act” (SDCA), allows state and local […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT An income tax credit that S.C. lawmakers created in 2017 to offset the state gasoline tax hike has been relatively unpopular so far, records show. And state revenue forecasters are now admitting it. After two years of wrongly predicting that taxpayers would claim the maximum-allowed amount of income tax credits, the state […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT       S.C. politicians routinely love to make promises about massive corporate investment and multitudes of new jobs in the Palmetto State. But the secretly crafted written agreements offering taxpayer-backed incentives in exchange for those promised jobs and investment often don’t live up to the official hype. Last month, The Nerve detailed how for […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT All we wanted was the truth. Over the past several decades, South Carolina legislators and governors, as well as local governments, collectively have given away billions in incentives to countless corporations. Cash, land, tax breaks and free job training have been thrown at companies in exchange for the promise of jobs. Taxpayers […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT A state agency is again predicting that S.C. taxpayers will claim the maximum-allowed amount of income tax credits to offset the gas tax hike, though the first official estimate was way off the mark. For last year’s income tax filings, the S.C. Revenue and Fiscal Affairs (RFA) Office projected that a total […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT In announcing in April that DHL Supply Chain, a global logistics company, would locate a $100 million distribution and warehouse park in Dorchester County, Gov. Henry McMaster in a prepared statement said he couldn’t “wait to see what the future holds for this great company here.” In exchange for the planned investment, […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The thousands of fans who are expected to attend the Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday aren’t the only folks supporting the annual NASCAR race. For years, taxpayers have subsidized the private stock-car racetrack dubbed “The Track Too Tough to Tame.” State comptroller general records, for example, show that the […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The state transportation department hasn’t replaced one bad bridge with gas-tax-hike revenues collected for nearly two years – despite promises by lawmakers that the money would be used to fix South Carolina’s crumbling roads and bridges. And the Department of Transportation has completed relatively few bridge projects in recent years with other […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The decades-old Darlington Raceway is getting a pricey facelift – and also could soon receive another big taxpayer-backed gift under fast-track legislation that the raceway’s president says was the company’s idea. If it passes, the S.C. House bill would be the second stand-alone legislation since 2013 benefiting the raceway, which annually hosts […]