A proposed tax credit in the General Assembly aims to convince businesses to hire First State high schoolers to help get them work experience before graduating.
The bipartisan bill authored by freshman Rep. David Bentz (D-Christiana) would currently refund 50 percent of the wages earned by a student at least 16 years old who interns for at least 20 weeks and completes 200 hours of paid work.
“The focus was really to how do we get high school kids to get internships when they’re in competition with a lot of other folks who are interested in the same thing and [with] the emphasis on [being] career and college ready, it seems like this would fit in to try to get kids the sort of work experience they need as early as possible,” Bentz said.
The bill would cap those refunds statewide to $1 million per year, with no single business getting more than $500,000.
Bentz says he’s reworking the bill to make sure the internships available are more career-focused, rather than entry-level customer service jobs.
“We want to make sure we’re attracting new opportunities as opposed to providing tax incentives for opportunities that already exist.”
Employers in the hospitality, health care, building trades, agriculture, and STEM fields, among others, would qualify under the current proposal.
Bentz says he still plans to pursue the bill at some point this year.