NASHVILLE – The Beacon Center of Tennessee released a brand new website this week, EndCorporateHandouts.com, which aims to expose all of the taxpayer handouts to big businesses in Tennessee. This website is the start of a large public awareness effort on corporate favoritism the Beacon Center will run over the next couple of years.

The website features an interactive map that tracks which businesses received handouts from the state and local governments. Nashville, Chattanooga, Clarksville, Memphis, and Charleston round out the top five areas for private businesses receiving taxpayer money. The site also features a brand new video on corporate favoritism and a ticker with the Tennessee businesses that have received the most taxpayer money over the past decade.

Beacon spokesman Mark Cunningham explained that this website is just the first step in the Beacon Center's efforts to eliminate corporate welfare in Tennessee. "This is a really exciting start in our effort to educate the public on the unfair and unethical practice of giving the tax dollars of hard-working Tennesseans to multi-million dollar corporations. Ending corporate handouts is an issue that those on both sides of the aisle can come together to support. This isn't an issue of right and left, it's an issue of right and wrong."

Cunningham went on to note, "It is not the government's job to pick winners and losers. A recent poll conducted by the Beacon Center with the help of icitizen showed that a whopping 70% of Tennesseans do not believe it is the government's job to give handouts to select businesses. Many people will be surprised to know that their tax dollars are going to private businesses, and this website will serve as a resource for those taxpayers to see exactly what businesses they are funding through taxes. Ultimately, businesses should succeed on the value they provide consumers, not who they know in government. We look forward to making that case to Tennesseans in the upcoming years."

The Beacon Center of Tennessee empowers Tennesseans to reclaim control of their lives, so that they can freely pursue their version of the American Dream. The Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and independent organization dedicated to providing concerned citizens and public leaders with expert empirical research and timely free market solutions to public policy issues in Tennessee.