Property taxes in Louisiana are local money. They fund the school district, the sheriff, the fire district, the library, the roads. The state doesn't collect them.

But for almost 90 years, the state has had the power to give them away.

That power is the Industrial Tax Exemption Program — ITEP — and if you follow big projects in this parish, you will run into the acronym constantly. This explainer covers what it is, how it changed in 2024, who decides, who pays, and how to look any application up yourself.

The short version

  • ITEP lets the state exempt a manufacturing project's new buildings and equipment from local property taxes — currently up to 80 percent, for up to 10 years.
  • The exemption is granted by the state Board of Commerce and Industry with the governor's approval — but the revenue it erases belongs entirely to local governments.
  • Since 1998, Louisiana has awarded more than $20 billion in local tax breaks through the program.
  • The rules changed in February 2024: job-creation requirements are gone, and the separate local votes by school boards and sheriffs were replaced with a single parish board vote.
  • Every application is public. You can look them up in the state's FastLane database.

How it works

ITEP is written into the Louisiana Constitution — Article VII, Section 21(F). It authorizes the Board of Commerce and Industry, with the governor's sign-off, to grant a "manufacturing establishment" a contract exempting its new capital investment — buildings, machinery, equipment — from ad valorem property taxes. Contracts run five years, renewable for five more.

Two features make Louisiana's version unusual among states. First, the decision is made at the state level, but the cost lands entirely at the local level — the state is spending someone else's money. Second, for roughly 80 years, the locals whose money it was had no say at all. Exemptions were near-automatic, at 100 percent.

Three eras of ITEP

Before 2016: automatic and total. For decades, exemptions were routinely granted at 100 percent with no local input. Research by the church-and-community coalition Together Louisiana found that in one year local governments across sixty parishes were forgoing about $1.9 billion annually, with public schools the hardest hit — roughly $720 million in 2017, a meaningful share of all school funding.

2016–2024: locals get a vote. Gov. John Bel Edwards' 2016 executive order cut the exemption to 80 percent, added job-creation requirements, and — the big one — required each local taxing body (the police jury, school board, sheriff) to approve or reject its own share. Locals mostly said yes: about 96 percent of projects won at least partial approval. But the reform mattered anyway — one analysis cited by the Louisiana Illuminator put the added local revenue at roughly $260 million per year. An attempt to write local control into the constitution failed in the state Senate in 2022, which left the whole arrangement resting on executive orders — changeable by the next governor. Which brings us to:

2024–present: the Landry rules. On February 21, 2024, Gov. Jeff Landry signed Executive Order JML 24-23, which governs ITEP advances filed since that date. The current rules:

  • The exemption stays capped at 80 percent for the initial five-year contract and the renewal.
  • Job-creation requirements are eliminated. "This program is about capital investment. It is not about job creation," Landry said when he signed the order.
  • The separate votes by the police jury, school board, and sheriff are consolidated into a single parish industrial board with representatives of those bodies. One up-or-down vote applies to everyone's taxes — no more partial approvals where the school board says no but the sheriff says yes.
  • The sequence: the state Board of Commerce and Industry acts first; if it approves, the parish board must hold a public hearing within 45 days. Ultimate authority runs through the governor.

Whether that consolidated local vote is a meaningful check or a formality is one of the open questions of the current era — and one Kingfish will be watching in real time if a big application lands here.

Why you're reading this now

Kingfish is covering the proposed Sunstripe Solar project — 10,356 acres near Hineston — and the question of whether its developer will seek ITEP is one of the biggest unanswered questions about the project's local impact.

Two facts so far. First, as of a mid-July search of the state's FastLane database, no ITEP filing exists for Treaty Oak Clean Energy, TO LA Solar 1, or any Sunstripe-related entity in Rapides or Vernon parish. Second, Rapides Parish saw this question coming: Section 26-13 of the parish's Solar Farm Ordinance, adopted in June 2025, explicitly reserves the Police Jury's right "to accept, reject, or request modification" of any ITEP for a solar project — while leaving the door open to a negotiated alternative called a PILOT. (We've explained PILOTs separately; the short version is that it's a substitute deal, not an exemption.)

How much money is actually at stake depends on assessed values and local millage rates, and we won't pretend to know those numbers before an application exists. When one does, we'll run the math and show our work.

How to look it up yourself

  • FastLane — Louisiana Economic Development's public project database. Search by company name, parish, or program ("ITE"). Advance notifications appear here before contracts are approved.
  • Board of Commerce and Industry agendas — posted by Louisiana Economic Development; this is where state approval happens.
  • Parish industrial board hearings — under the 2024 rules, the local hearing must happen within 45 days of state board approval. Watch the Police Jury's meeting calendar and agendas.

The debate

Supporters — including the state's major business lobby, on whose stage the 2024 order was signed — argue ITEP is Louisiana's most important tool for landing capital-intensive industry, and that without it projects go to Texas or Mississippi. Critics — led by Together Louisiana, whose research drove the 2016 reforms — argue the program hands out money that belongs to schools and local services, often for investments that would have happened anyway, and that no one at the state level has ever seriously tested that question.

Both sides agree on one thing: the dollars are enormous. Which is exactly why every application deserves a public paper trail — and why we'll link one every time.