What is tax increment revenue?
Christopher Harper
Updated on April 02, 2026
Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, is a geographically targeted economic development tool. It captures the increase in property taxes, and sometimes other taxes, resulting from new development, and diverts that revenue to subsidize that development.
How do you calculate tax increment financing?
The incremental real property tax revenue is simply the incremental AV multiplied by the total levy rate. In Year 1: $2,625,000 x 6.9% = $181,125. The annual real property increment is then totaled for the TIF’s term.
What are TIFs used for?
TIF bonds have been used to fund land acquisition, sewer and water upgrades, environmental remediation, construction of parks, and road construction, among others. Over the past several decades in the United States, two project variations of TIF have evolved: bond financing and pay as you go.
What is a tax increment bond?
Tax increment bonds are issued to promote redevelopment of blighted areas or those in danger of becoming blighted. In a typical transaction, the governmental unit designates a redevelopment project area to be improved and causes its equalized assessed value to be determined and certified.
Who pays for a TIF?
All landowners in a TIF district pay taxes based on the value of their property – just like a residential home has taxes that are assessed depending on what the property is worth. In a TIF district, the base value of properties are frozen for a period of time – often between 20 and 30 years.
Are TIFs bad?
In the long-term, however, TIFs can create tax revenue issues for local governments. They could’ve used the property taxes over the past 20 or 30 years for city-wide projects. Instead, they may need to raise other citizens’ taxes or take on additional debt to complete needed projects.
Is tax increment financing taxable income?
Alternatively, the TIF-eligible costs could be included in the basis of the underlying property with a corresponding zero basis receivable being recorded. Under such approach the taxpayer would recognize TIF reimbursements as taxable income.
What does .TIF stand for?
Tagged Image File Format
TIF (or TIFF) is an image format used for containing high quality graphics. It stands for “Tagged Image File Format” or “Tagged Image Format”. The format was created by Aldus Corporation but Adobe acquired the format later and made subsequent update in this format.
What is a residential TIF?
Dec 2015. Tax increment financing (TIF) is a method of financing costs associated with public improvements such as streets, sidewalks, sewer and water, and real estate development.
Do tax abatements hurt schools?
For the first time in 16 years, it reports, local funding (65 percent of which comes from property taxes) provided the greatest share of school funding. That’s why costly long-term property tax abatements, routinely granted to large companies in the name of economic development, hurt schools more than ever.
Does tax increment financing really work?
Tax increment financing, or TIF, subsidizes companies by refunding or diverting a portion of their taxes to help finance development in an area or (less frequently) on a project site. Usually, TIF helps to pay for infrastructure improvements (streets, sewers, parking lots) in the area near a new development.
Why is there a need for tax increment financing?
Tax increment financing essentially allows a city to use all new property taxes over the designated area for further redevelopment. Tax increment financing (TIF) is a popular legal option for cities because individual property taxes do not increase and the money is reinvested in the neighborhood.
What the Heck is tax increment financing?
Tax increment financing is a method by which a city or municipality can generate new money for improving undeveloped areas. When a city wishes to improve or redevelop an area, it can designate it as a Tax Increment Finance Zone. It can then use the excess taxes created by the development to fund the project.
How does Tax Increment Financing (TIF) work?
Tax increment financing dedicates tax increments within a certain defined district to finance the debt that is issued to pay for the project. TIF was designed to channel funding toward improvements in distressed, underdeveloped, or underutilized parts of a jurisdiction where development might otherwise not occur.