Are There Opportunities in Opportunity Zones?

Opportunity Zones (OZ) are an economic development tool designed to spur investment in impoverished areas (census tracts). OZs were created by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. They allow investors to defer (and, if investments are held for a long time, to partially exclude) capital gains received from qualified investments made in Opportunity Zones from federal tax. In this research we speculate on the potential effect of the Opportunity Zones program in the greater Cleveland area. 8,764 census tracts in the United States received Opportunity Zone designation. 320 of them were selected in Ohio. Of those, 317 are low-income census tracts and 3 contiguous non-low-income tracts. Since OZs are a very recent invention (the final OZs included in the program were identified by the end of 2018), there is, as of now, no data or empirical research on them