[gruez]

>I wonder how much of these "subsidies" are actually tax abatements as opposed to a handout?

Is there a difference? Money is fungible so there's really no difference between a $1M check from the government and $1M in tax abatements.

[sokoloff]

Many of these abatements are over a period of time making the net-present-value of the abatement lower than the face value, which also provides some insurance against a project failure (whereupon you can stop the future abatements in a way that you can't as easily claw back a check that's already been cashed by a company that’s now bankrupt).