Fees and Firms: An Empirical Examination of the Relationship Between Development Impact Fees and Firms

Abstract

Over the past few decades, many counties have adopted development impact fees as an alternative to traditional tax funding for infrastructure required to support new development. In a theoretical model of firm entry using fixed costs and increasing returns to scale, additional fees, modeled as an increase in fixed costs, reduces the number of entrants and increases a firm’s size. Using county level data on homogenous, small draw area firms in Florida, the research presented in this paper suggests that fees reduce the number of firms per capita in a jurisdiction. While population and market size are the main drivers of firms’ location decisions, the results presented in this paper suggest that fees may have a negative effect on firm location decisions at the margin. Policy makers concerned about employment and commercial tax base should give pause before implementing a fee system.