November 9, 2018 9:12AM

Opportunity Zones Enrich Lucky Landowners

Last year’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created “Opportunity Zones,” which are neighborhoods chosen by politicians to receive special tax breaks. The Wall Street Journal recently published on an op‐​ed and a news story on O‐​Zones. Here is my unpublished response: 

Steve Glickman provided lobbyist talking points in “Opportunity Is Coming to a City Near You” (Oct. 24), but the reality of the new “opportunity zones” was reported by Peter Grant the same day in “Tax‐​Break Zones Lure Buyers.”

Grant’s article indicates that the 8,700 tax‐​favored O‐​Zones were a get‐​rich‐​quick bonanza for current landowners as the tax breaks were rapidly capitalized in prices. Many thousands of landowners saw their property values jump by as much as 50 percent, but that means that many thousands of other landowners just outside the O‐​Zones got the shaft. Politicians have drawn lines down streets in cities across the nation bestowing wealth to people on one side and bypassing people on the other.

The whole exercise is unseemly and distortionary, and it has set in motion a lobbying frenzy for years to come as landowners near O‐​Zones will demand that the lines be redrawn. The get‐​rich bonanza for O‐​Zone lobbyists has just begun.


Here are other commentaries on the new zones: