Sedgwick County, Wichita approve nearly $100M in tax breaks for Boeing, others

Wichita and Sedgwick County unanimously approved around $100 million in property tax breaks over 10 years for Boeing Wichita and other aviation-related companies this week as officials thanked Boeing for returning to the Air Capital of the World after a nearly 20-year absence.

“Unfortunately, the last 20 years we were Spirit, and we struggled,” Adam Pogue, Boeing Wichita’s director of manufacturing site services, said Wednesday at the County Commission meeting. “So the investment that we should’ve had wasn’t there. It’s different with Boeing.”

Last month, company officials announced they planned to invest $1 billion in Wichita over the next three years on facilities, production systems and employee training. The city of Wichita on Tuesday approved issuing $450 million in Industrial Revenue Bonds that come with a 10-year property tax abatement that forgoes about $5 million in property taxes annually for Sedgwick County and over $4 million a year for Derby Public Schools.

The Sedgwick County Commission approved the tax breaks on Wednesday, although they were not legally required to hold a hearing or to vote on it.

Under state law, school districts don’t get a say in whether IRBs are approved.

The subsidies come with no jobs commitments, but Boeing said it plans to hire an additional 150 employees over the next five years as part of the expansion. The company employed 12,730 people in Sedgwick County as of Feb. 17.

Pogue said the major investment by Boeing shows the company has plans to stay in Wichita for the long haul.

“It signifies that we are going to be here for a long time to come, and I just think it’s important that overall this Wichita site is as competitive as possible,” he said. “And this is just very helpful in terms of stabilizing that.”

Boeing announced recently that it plans to increase production on the narrow-body 737 line from 42 to 47 planes a month this summer and the wide-body 787 from eight to 10 a month this year.

The new incentives come as local governments wrestle with how to balance increasing costs to provide government services and skyrocketing residential property valuations. There’s also the need to compete with other cities willing to offer similar tax breaks to lure away large companies.

Elected officials shrugged off concerns about rising property taxes and said the tax breaks for Boeing will ultimately create new tax revenue when the company’s improvements go onto the tax rolls in the late 2030s.

“I know there’s naysayers out there in our community, and I appreciate that we ignore the — I hear the naysayers, but we can’t govern by naysayers,” Commissioner Pete Meitzner said. “I’m proud to embrace whatever we need to do to be a teammate with the Boeings of the world. . . . I can go to sleep at night thinking that we’ve done what we can to assure that Boeing is staying and adding to our economy.”

Commissioner Ryan Baty, who often expresses a desire to lower property taxes for homeowners, said the incentives for Boeing were needed to remain competitive with other parts of the country and to lock-in the largest area employer for years to come.

“This is more commitment,” Baty said. “You’re here for the long run, and it feels good to know that, and it feels good to see the contributions and investments that you’re making in our community. So I’m very supportive of this today, based on all the information that I’ve been given, and I want to thank publicly Boeing for the investments that you’re making in our community.”

Commissioner Jim Howell, a former Boeing employee whose district includes the Boeing campus, said the tax breaks help level the playing field for Boeing in its global competition for aviation dominance against Airbus, which has granted around 25% equity in its company to France, Germany and Spain.

“They (Airbus) heavily subsidize from governments — I think it’s cash on the table — to help them be competitive to a private sector company in the U.S. So the tables are not fair,” Howell said. “The fact is, if we can do a little thing like this to help them be successful, it’s a small thing we’re doing to essentially compete with the world of pressures that they’re dealing with.”

While Boeing is a private company, it is heavily subsidized by federal, state and local governments — including nearly $16 billion since 1994, according to Good Jobs First, a nonpartisan organization that tracks corporate subsidies. When you add in federal and state loans, bond financing and other financial assistance, that number climbs to nearly $76 billion during that time period.

The U.S.-based governments that subsidize Boeing get paid back indirectly, largely through income and other payroll taxes from the company’s employees and from other downstream economic development benefits of having a major industry nearby. The European countries that have invested in Airbus receive annual dividends. France, Germany and Spain received dividends of $295.5 million, $295.3 million and $111.3 million, respectively, in 2025. Their stakes in the company are worth additional billions of dollars.

Brent Shelton, deputy chief financial officer for Sedgwick County, said the tax breaks would eventually add to the local tax base.

“Any taxes that are currently being paid by Boeing will continue to be paid by Boeing,” Shelton said. “We’re not giving up anything that we currently get. But the incentive is, if you will, deferring the taxes on this investment until the expiration of the tax abatement,” Shelton said. “So you can look at it like we’re giving up something that we don’t have today, but at the end of the life of the exemption, we’re going to add to the tax base and add to the property tax revenues that come to the county and school district in the affected tax authority.”