Employers in Blue Earth and Nicollet counties have created 44 more jobs than required under the JOBZ program, according to interviews and formal reports filed this month.

The nine companies in both counties receiving JOBZ tax breaks appear to have met or exceeded their job creation requirements months or years ahead of their deadlines.

About 91 jobs in Blue Earth County and 51 in Nicollet County have been created by companies that began or expanded using JOBZ benefits.

Companies using JOBZ to expand don’t have to pay income taxes, sales taxes or property taxes on new growth, and startups don’t pay those taxes on their entire operation. The program was created in 2004 by Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration as a way to create jobs in rural Minnesota.

But while the benefits of the program are clear, the costs aren’t.

The state government loses corporate and sales taxes. Counties, cities, school district and regional government don’t get property taxes on all those factories, processing plants and warehouses until 2016.

The Center for Rural Policy and Development in St. Peter analyzed the benefits of JOBZ in a December report, and President Jack Geller said the state is often more forthright about the program’s benefits than its costs.

The problem is that it takes time, sometimes years, for the state to compile tax reports. And it can be difficult to navigate county tax systems to determine how much property taxes were forgone.

Ed Tschida, a consultant who works on JOBZ projects in Blue Earth County, adds that the program also exempts income tax on all investments in JOBZ projects. That makes it even tougher to evaluate the program’s costs.

But that doesn’t mean the costs of JOBZ can’t be somewhat examined as companies and elected officials continue to report their happiness with the program.

Subsidies vary

There is one way to get a very rough estimate of how much subsidy a company will receive over the life of its JOBZ involvement. When they applied, companies estimated how much money they would save using JOBZ.

It’s necessarily imperfect because any estimate of subsidies relies on estimating the unknowable: How will any given company perform over the next 10 years? If anyone could reliably guess that, they’d likely be making money on Wall Street, not in south-central Minnesota.

But it’s also clear some companies will benefit more from JOBZ because there’s no limit on how much a company can benefit compared to how many jobs it creates. Everyone gets the same tax benefits but can create more or fewer jobs.

According to a study by the Center for Rural Policy and Development, about half of JOBZ projects result in five or fewer new jobs.