Zone a jobs tool

Bill Bradley looks at it as another tool in the toolkit.
Earlier this year Jay County was invited to join the Fort Wayne Foreign Trade Zone, and the executive director of Jay County Development Corporation thought it was a good idea.
“We got a call from the folks at the city of Fort Wayne,” Bradley recalls.
Jay, Randolph, and Blackford counties were being invited to join the Fort Wayne zone. In fact, the three were among the few counties in the state not already involved in a Foreign Trade Zone.
“Most Foreign Trade Zones are headquartered at airports,” Bradley says.
Under the FTZ regulations, there are special tax benefits to companies doing import and export business. Customs duties on imported materials, for instance, can be deferred until those materials are incorporated into a finished product.
“It helps cash flow,” says Bradley.
FTZ No. 182 now includes Adams, Allen, DeKalb, Huntington, Noble, Wabash, Wells and Whitley counties in addition to Jay, Blackford and Randolph.
Jay is part of the FTZ under the Alternative Site Framework, which allows for expansion of the zone beyond the area immediately surrounding an international airport.
Bradley says it’s not clear whether any local companies will find the designation and the associated tax benefits to be of use.
“The point is to have it available,” he said. “We’re going to do a marketing blitz to our local companies about the FTZ about the first of the year.”[[In-content Ad]]