Last week, one of my board members asked me what, specifically, Anson County is doing to take advantage of the Federal Opportunity Zone Program, so I thought this might be a good time to review the basics, discuss the relevance for economic development organizations in general, and explain how the program impacts our county in particular. The Opportunity Zone Program was created by recently passed federal tax legislation, known as The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R.1). North Carolina Opportunity Zones offer qualified investors certain tax benefits when they invest unrealized capital gains into these areas, the general idea being that large investors would pump new capital into these less-prosperous communities. The law allowed each state to designate up to 25% of its low-income census tracts as zone candidates. Since North Carolina has about 1,000 tracts which meet the qualifications, only 252 could be chosen. The North Carolina Department of Commerce chose thes...