Opportunity Zones have been having a rough time in the press. The tax policy—bipartisan, market based, and designed to inject billions of dollars into long overlooked communities—has recently been cast in the media as another tax loophole for billionaires, giving investors (many political connected) big tax breaks to build real estate projects for the rich, not the underserved people the law was designed to help.
Every new tax law creates a new loophole. There will always be bad actors and unintended consequences. As stories on tax policies go, it makes for a scandalous read. But there is another story, one less salacious but equally important, of bold investors and creative civic leaders using OZ law as it was meant to be.