Federal Reserve Fiscal Impact Tool
(FIT)
The Federal Reserve Fiscal Impact Tool is designed to help
local economic developers learn more about the local tax impacts of economic
development projects. This Excel workbook provides defaults and simple
assumptions, enabling the user to input specifications of a project and quickly
ascertain the sales and property tax gains that will accrue to an area. To use the workbook, you will need a version
of Excel which has Visual Basic installed (standard on most recent
versions). This course uses the Minneapolis version of
the workbook (it incorporates data from MI, MN, MT, ND, SD, and WI). You may obtain your own copy (free) of this
workbook or workbooks for other regions from the Federal Reserve Board at http://www.federalreserve.gov/community.htm
In addition to performing an automated tax revenue assessment,
FIT can be used for many data purposes. It contains information on all counties
and independent cities in the Upper Midwest as
well as all incorporated places in the region it covers. Historical city and
county population estimates and county per capita income and labor force
figures are provided. Also included is
information for cities and counties from the 1997 Census of Retail Trade on the
number of retail establishments, total retail sales, retail sales per capita
and per dollar of income.
Note that the analysis by FIT represents a quick estimate of
impact. This tool does not purport to have a high level of precision. It seeks
to give only a rough picture. Greater
detail can be obtained from a deeper review of the project parameters.
FIT consists of seven worksheets.
- The
user enters pertinent information in the Data Entry and Cost Module
worksheets.
- The
tool's revenue-related results are presented in the Output worksheet.
There are four other worksheets which may be of interest for
more advanced analysis.
- The
Cost Module worksheet produces a cost-benefit analysis.
- The CountyData worksheet provides four pages of tables and
charts related to the geographic area being evaluated.
- The Summary
worksheet contains a list of contents and re-presents all of the table and
text summaries generated by FIT in a form readable by screen reader; the
tables in this sheet are also formatted for easier cutting and pasting.
- The RetailSales&Pop worksheet primarily contains
population and retail sales data for cities. The user is unlikely to need to access
this sheet.
In addition, there are two Word Documents, a Users Guide and
Instructions for saving FIT scenarios in Excel.
It is highly recommended that user refer to the Users Guide. Besides giving an overview of FIT and many
step-by-step instructions, it discusses all data entry and default assumptions
used in the tool. The guide also
contains hyperlinks to make it easier to assemble some of the data.
- FIT Excel Workbook (this is a very large
file—7.5Mg—so you will probably want to download it from a
fast Internet connection) (You will be prompted to “enable
macros” and to accept the Federal Reserve Board’s
agreement. Do both.)
- Users
Guide (42 pages) (When it opens, change the command window
“Final Showing Markup” to “Final”)
- Instructions
for saving FIT scenarios in Excel
© 1996 A.J.Filipovitch
Revised 11 March 2005