How is Wisconsin on the hook for billions of dollars if all they did was _not_ collect taxes? They shouldn't be able to be on the hook for anything if that's all they did. You sure they didn't get some kind of kickbacks as well?
We don't really have corporate taxes in Wisconsin per sé.
So this deal is structured as a series of payments to Foxconn of cold hard cash. In cartoonishly simplified terms - I pay my state taxes, and the state puts it in boxes of cash, and gives it to Foxconn at the rate of roughly $200,000 to $300,000 per job they create.
Good news is the factory isn't open, so payments haven't started. So, if we can get a little lucky, the whole thing will fall through and we can just eat the losses we've taken to date instead of staying at the table and putting the really big money into the pot.
