Report: Taxpayers Won’t Recoup Foxconn Investment Until 2043

It would take 27 years for Wisconsin taxpayers to get back all of their proposed investment in the Foxconn L-C-D screen factory. That’s according to the non partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau which analyzed the proposed three-billion dollar package of tax breaks, lower utility costs, relaxing of environmental laws, a state guarantee that Foxconn would get local government subsidies if the project fails. The Fiscal Bureau also says that for the first 15 years, taxpayers would give Foxconn one-billion dollars more than the new taxes generated by the plant — and all this assumes that it would operate a full levels with up to 13-thousand new jobs eventually. Despite the big early payouts, Governor Scott Walker’s office remains confident that Foxconn is an “excellent investment” with returns of ten-billion in company investments, 10-billion in new payrolls, and thousands of jobs. The Fiscal Bureau wrote that the Walker administration’s projections “must be considered highly speculative.”