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How American tax breaks brought a Chinese solar energy giant to Ohio

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Nestled among the corn fields of Pataskala, Ohio, Illuminate USA’s sprawling new solar factory is buzzing. Hundreds of freshly hired local employees are hoisting pallets, soldering equipment and inspecting their work as sheets of glass are transformed into state-of-the-art photovoltaic panels. They’re collecting hourly wages that start at double the state minimum. The factory has also delivered contracts to area electricians and suppliers.

From the outside, these are the hallmarks of the 21st century clean energy manufacturing boom promised by the Biden administration, the result of sweeping incentives designed to restore national prowess in a market dominated by China. 

In reality, what looks like a domestic triumph is also a win for America’s primary industrial and geopolitical rival. Invenergy, America’s biggest private renewable power developer, owns 51% of the plant. Longi Green Energy Technology Co., the Chinese solar giant, owns the other 49%, and it’s Longi’s panel-making expertise, technology and supply chain that are churning out tariff-free equipment for the U.S. market. 

Inside the plant, signs in both English and Mandarin admonish workers to clean up trash. Machine displays also toggle between the two languages. More than 100 Chinese nationals are on site working alongside more than 1,000 American colleagues, and bridging the language barrier requires lots of hand gestures and smartphone-enabled translation. Illuminate says much of this is temporary, and most of the Chinese workers will leave once the Americans are up to speed. 

But long after they return home, Longi will continue to profit. The joint venture benefits from millions in economic development incentives and federal tax credits for domestic clean energy manufacturing. For its part, Longi avoids anti-China tariffs and deepens its foothold in one of the world’s fastest-growing solar markets.

Companies based in or linked to China are replicating the strategy across the U.S. They are building or planning to build at least a dozen plants with 30 gigawatts of module-making capacity, according to a Bloomberg review of public statements, filings and other documentation. All told, the facilities would be able to supply roughly three-quarters of today’s U.S. panel needs. (BloombergNEF projects U.S. domestic demand for solar panels will be 45.5 gigawatts in 2024 and 50.4 gigawatts in 2025.)

American manufacturers are crying foul, saying these factories undermine their quest to build a domestic solar supply chain. Although other countries have taken advantage of the IRA’s subsidies, political objections have focused on Chinese investment. Bipartisan momentum is building in Congress to block China-backed firms from claiming tax credits for manufacturing anything central to the energy transition — a category that extends beyond solar panels to electric vehicles and batteries.

In Ohio, retired middle-school science teacher Eileen DeRolf has become an outspoken critic of Illuminate and the policies that brought it to Pataskala. She points to a 15-year tax abatement from the city and $4 million in incentives from a state economic development agency, to say nothing of the $350 million in potential annual tax subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act. 

“To me, this is betraying America, to allow an uneven playing field,” DeRolf said. “I happen to not particularly want our geopolitical No. 1 enemy to benefit off our economic system.”

Illuminate and its American and Chinese parent companies see it differently. They point to an influx of well-paying jobs and to a resurrection of manufacturing in a fast-growing sector of the economy. 

“We’re a majority-owned American company,” said John Duer, Illuminate’s chief legal officer. “We have a minority partner based in China. We’re not a Chinese company trying to do business in the U.S.”

Executives at Invenergy and Longi had been talking about collaborating for years, but it took the Inflation Reduction Act — the 2022 law meant to jumpstart U.S. clean energy manufacturing — to spur them to action. Less than seven months after President Joe Biden signed the IRA, they announced plans for the Pataskala plant, and by early 2024, panels were rolling off the assembly line.

In addition to the tax credits Illuminate can claim for its U.S.-made panels, its parent companies reap significant benefits from the tie-up. Invenergy is the factory’s first and biggest customer, earning additional credits for using domestically produced components in its solar arrays. And Longi, like other Chinese panel-makers, brings advantages gained through decades of experience and generous support from Beijing. 

China identified solar panels as a priority more than a decade ago, handing subsidies and low-cost financing to developers and manufacturers, while pushing utilities to use more renewable power. Chinese firms also benefited from cheap electricity and cheap labor.

In addition, the industry has been dogged by allegations that some suppliers used forced labor from the country’s westernmost province, a mostly-Muslim region called Xinjiang. Beijing has repeatedly denied these accusations.

What no one disputes is that today Chinese companies dominate the market for solar panels and all of their component parts.

For environmental advocates, China’s cheap panels have been a boon, driving a more than 50-fold increase in emissions-free solar power generation globally since 2010. But to American rivals, something more nefarious was at work. They argued Chinese solar companies were selling their products below cost to unfairly corner the market, and trade authorities agreed, kicking off a cycle of tariffs meant to level the playing field.

Today, steep U.S. tariffs have effectively killed domestic demand for made-in-China solar panels. Companies, including Longi, first responded by shifting operations to other Asian nations, spurring another round of trade probes and enforcement. By producing panels in Ohio, Longi steps out of this game of Whac-a-Mole — and avoids at least $155 million in annual tariffs.

(The estimate is based on the average price in September for panels exported to the U.S. ($0.25 per watt), Longi’s share of Illuminate’s planned annual production capacity (5GW) and a potential combined antidumping and countervailing duty rate for Malaysian modules exported to the U.S. of 25%. Note: Any final antidumping and countervailing duty rates would be set as part of a U.S. trade probe of imports from Malaysia and three other Southeast Asian nations expected to conclude next year.)

Combined with the incentives from the IRA, Longi and other panel-makers can “make huge profits,” said Yana Hryshko, chief solar analyst at consulting group Wood Mackenzie. After surviving two decades of industry turbulence, these “are not stupid companies,” she said. “They will not make a move without being confident.”

On a June Friday morning, job-seekers started to gather at the Perry County, Ohio, career center well before Illuminate’s recruitment event was scheduled to begin. Many of the plant’s workers come from outside Pataskala, including areas hit hard by the collapse of coal mining. 

A job at the plant would mean a longer commute for Tricia Tilley, a 47-year-old janitor and church secretary. It would also nearly double her income and provide health insurance for her and her teenage son. 

As for the company’s ties to China? “I know they’re from another country, but they’re here trying to put money into our country,” she said. “As long as it’s a good job and they’re paying everybody — keeping on the up-and-up — I don’t see any problem with it. Follow the rules like everybody else, we’re cool.”  

Right now, Illuminate depends on the expertise of Chinese workers who’ve spent years handling specialized module-making machinery and brittle crystalline silicon cells. For many, it’s their first time outside of China, drawn by higher salaries and a sense of adventure.

“We’re here just to teach the American workers,” said Li, a production line technician who asked to be identified by her family name because she wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters. “When they can start a production line by themselves, there’ll be no need for us to be here anymore.” 

Li’s days begin with a video chat around 5 a.m., a chance to talk with her children in China before a company shuttle takes her from suburban Columbus to the factory. Many of the Chinese workers at Illuminate work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, logging 60% more hours every month than the plant’s typical American employees. 

Longi’s expats went through language training, though most rely on translators to communicate with their trainees. They also got a crash course in American culture, with advice to avoid commenting on race, skin color or body type. Li said her American colleagues have been kind.

“I hadn’t been out of China before. Now I get to come out and take a look,” she said. Li pegged her timeline at “two or three years. After that I’ll go back. Then I can say I’m a person who has been to the United States!” 

Illuminate is leaning into its heartland identity. Its website touts its role “investing in Ohio” and “onshoring America’s supply chains.” It’s partnering with local high schools for a robotics challenge and also has sponsored the city’s summer fireworks and its roughly 60-year-old fall festival.

DeRolf and other local skeptics deride these efforts as a charm offensive, albeit an effective one. It’s made it “ever so much more difficult to get this town and the people to pay attention to what we’ve got in that building,” DeRolf said.

Like DeRolf, activists in Mesquite, Texas, are taking aim at a $270 million plant that began producing panels late last year. Some 1,400 Texans now work at the factory owned by Canadian Solar Inc. — and while the company’s corporate headquarters are in Ontario, most of its directors and much of its manufacturing reside in China. 

Foreign direct investment has always been critical to countries trying to build domestic industry. In the late 1990s, China, for its part, welcomed Western automakers, providing access to its growing market while learning from their decades of experience. 

“Most of the companies that are building solar panels right now that have the know-how or skills are Chinese,” said Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They also have well-established supply chains outside the U.S. At Illuminate, for example, panels are made with photovoltaic cells and glass from Malaysia and aluminum frames from Vietnam.

Many key materials aren’t yet produced domestically, and Illuminate says it’s actively working to expand its U.S. supply base.

The promise of the Inflation Reduction Act was that “you’re restoring the American industrial base,” said Nathan Picarsic, the founder of consulting group Horizon Advisory, which has investigated Chinese supply chain dominance and the use of forced labor. But as more Chinese-backed solar companies operate on U.S. soil, it betrays “the story that we’re telling ourselves about the manufacturing renaissance.”

The clash reverberates beyond solar to the fast-growing field of electric vehicles and battery manufacturing, also subsidized by the Inflation Reduction Act. In rural northwest Michigan, the town government is opposing an electric vehicle battery factory planned by a subsidiary of China’s Gotion High-tech Co. Ltd. The project is still mired in legal fights.    

In Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin discouraged Ford Motor Co.’s interest in building an electric vehicle battery plant with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. in the state, calling it a “Trojan horse” for Beijing. The move drew praise from Youngkin’s Republican base. Ford is now building the plant in Michigan and will license CATL’s technology in lieu of a deeper partnership. 

Licensing is one way the U.S. can tap Chinese manufacturing expertise and technical know-how while retaining more control over operations, said Mazzocco. Regardless, the issue is a flashpoint for politicians — and is fueling bipartisan efforts in Congress to bar companies with ties to China and other so-called “foreign entities of concern” from claiming the IRA’s manufacturing tax incentives. (It’s also a way lawmakers could try to offset spending in the next budget fight.) The Treasury Department could also move unilaterally to impose restrictions on what projects qualify for the credit. 

Cory Ford, a school bus mechanic in the Pataskala area, doesn’t share his community’s embrace of the Illuminate plant. He doesn’t want U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit Chinese industry; he’s also concerned that the firms could leave as quickly as they arrived. After all, Chinese companies have become expert at rapidly relocating in response to unfavorable tariffs or taxation. 

“We’ve given so much in subsidies and government funding,” he said. “When that runs dry, how quickly is that building going to empty out?” And, he asks, what happens to the local American workers left behind? 

Illuminate isn’t going anywhere, Duer said, even if Washington puts the manufacturing subsidies outside of reach: “We would adjust. Nothing is fatal. Nothing can’t be overcome. The fact of the matter is, we’re here to stay.”

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Accounting

Trump win may threaten IRS funding

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The Internal Revenue Service may be facing steep cuts in its budget with the win on Tuesday night of President-elect Donald Trump.

Funding for the IRS has become a political issue, with Republicans successfully pushing to cut the extra $80 billion funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 already during battles over the debt limit.

“I think IRS funding is at significant risk right now, both the annual appropriation funding as well as the remaining IRA funding,” said Washington National Tax Office principal Rochelle Hodes at the Top 25 Firm Crowe LLP. 

Donald Trump during an election night event in West Palm Beach, Florida
Donald Trump during an election night event in West Palm Beach, Florida

Win McNamee/Getty Images

So far, Republicans have mainly called for cuts in the IRS’s enforcement budget. The increase in enforcement is supposed to be used to pay for the cost of the IRA, but the funding increase is also supposed to be used for taxpayer service and technology improvements.

“The only question for me on funding is, will any portion of the funding remain available for taxpayer service-related improvements at the IRS?” said Hodes.

The Direct File free tax prep program that the IRA funded could also be targeted, even as the IRS makes plans to expand it beyond the original 12 pilot states this year to 24 next tax season.

“I don’t think that will be in the sight line, but the IRA money is part of what’s being used for that,” said Hodes. “As we’ve seen in appropriations bills, there could be language directed at that, that no money can be spent on that initiative.”

A more important priority will be the extension of the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. “Getting TCJA resolved is going to be the first priority,” said Hodes. “The second question is, how will the cost of that endeavor be determined. If the view that is held by several Senate Republicans wins the day, then the cost of extending the expiring provisions will not be counted under those particular budget rules that are created dealing with extending current policy. If, however, that view is not adopted, then there is a high cost just to TCJA, and so any other provisions with cost will sort of stretch the boundaries of what many in Congress would be comfortable with. I think it will be necessary to see how the scoring goes for extending TCJA provisions.”

Trump has also called for exempting various forms of income, such as tip income, Social Security income and overtime from taxes.

“I also am not sure which of the ideas that were put forward on the campaign trail, other than extending TCJA, are provisions that have true champions who will want to pursue those,” said Hodes. 

That may depend on who ends up in Congress, with several important races in the House yet to be decided.

“Although the House remains undecided, the Republicans’ control of the Senate makes it much more likely that Republicans will be able to implement many of Trump’s proposed tax policies, such as making parts of the expiring 2017 TCJA provisions permanent,” said John Gimigliano, principal in charge of the Federal Legislative & Regulatory Services group within KPMG’s Washington National Tax practice, in a statement. “The pressing question now is how the Administration and Congress will fund such an ambitious agenda and what additional measures they might introduce, such as eliminating taxes on tips and overtime. These items will only add to the hefty $4+ trillion price tag they face. Until then, taxpayers should continue to stay apprised of developments and scenario plan for the different outcomes to get ahead.” 

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Firms plan to raise fees next year

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Over half of accounting and tax firms plan to increase fees across all services in 2025, according to a new survey.

The survey, released Wednesday by practice management technology company Ignition, found that the majority (around 58%) cited rising business costs as the main motivator for their fee increases, while only 5% are raising prices to increase revenue. Most of the nearly 350 firms surveyed intend to increase fees across services by 5% or 10%.

Some 57% of the respondents plan to increase fees across all services. With regard to tax preparation specifically, 90% of the survey respondents plan to increase fees for individual tax returns, and 87% plan to increase fees for business tax returns. In addition, 70% plan to increase fees for tax planning and advisory services;. 85% plan to increase fees for bookkeeping and accounting services; and 76% plan to increase fees for CFO and controller services.

“While accounting firm owners are embracing price increases in 2025, the report shows that the majority (around 58%) cite rising business costs as the main motivator,” said Ignition global president Greg Strickland in a statement. “Only 5% are raising prices to increase revenue, which indicates an opportunity for firms to leverage pricing as a strategic tool to unlock revenue growth.”

The report found a shift from hourly billing to fixed-fee and value-based pricing, with 79% of the survey respondents indicating they use fixed-fee or value-based pricing for bookkeeping and accounting services. Over half (54%) use fixed-fee or value-based pricing for tax preparation services, 67% use fixed-fee or value-based pricing for tax planning and advisory services, and 75% use fixed-fee or value-based pricing for CFO and controller services.

The report benchmarked current fees for tax, accounting and advisory services, which varied based on firms’ annual revenue range. The biggest variation in pricing was for tax planning and advisory services in particular. For firms with revenue of as much as $250,000, approximately 23% said they charge less than $500 for these services, while a nearly equal number (around 21%) indicated they charge more than $2000.

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Millionaire tax backed by Illinois voters in threat to Chicago

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Illinois voters approved a nonbinding proposal to add an extra 3% levy on annual incomes of more than $1 million, which could fuel a new effort to raise taxes on the state’s highest earners.

The ballot measure – which was an advisory question – won 60% of support, according to the Associated Press. About 90% of the votes have been counted.

“The vote is a gigantic step in the right direction,” said former Governor Pat Quinn, a supporter of the measure. 

quinn-pat-bl020212-357.jpg
Pat Quinn

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

While the proposal has no legal effect, the vote opens the door to a new debate over ramping up taxes on the rich even as Illinois and Chicago, its biggest city, contend with population declines and a string of departures by major companies and wealthy residents. In 2020, voters rejected a separate measure backed by Governor JB Pritzker to replace the state’s flat tax on incomes with a graduated system that would raise rates on higher-earners.  

The Pritzker plan drew staunch opposition from billionaire financier Ken Griffin, who donated about $50 million to help torpedo the initiative. Griffin then left Chicago for Miami in 2022, moving the headquarters of his Citadel empire there as well. Companies from Caterpillar Inc. to Boeing Co. have also departed amid rising concerns over public safety, regulation and taxes. 

This year’s referendum asked voters if the Illinois Constitution should be amended to create the additional tax on income over $1 million. It called for using the proceeds to ease the state’s notoriously high property levies. 

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