Terms, defined

For purposes of the Employment and Investment Growth Act, unless the context otherwise requires:

(1) Any term shall have the same meaning as used in Chapter 77, article 27;

(2) Base year shall mean the year immediately preceding the year during which the application was submitted;

(3) Base-year employee shall mean any individual who was employed in Nebraska and subject to the Nebraska income tax on compensation received from the taxpayer or its predecessors during the base year and who is employed at the project;

(4) Compensation shall mean the wages and other payments subject to withholding for federal income tax purposes;

(5) Entitlement period shall mean the year during which the required increases in employment and investment were met or exceeded, and the next six years;

(6) Equivalent employees shall mean the number of employees computed by dividing the total hours paid in a year by the product of forty times the number of weeks in a year;

(7) Investment shall mean the value of qualified property incorporated into or used at the project. For qualified property owned by the taxpayer, the value shall be the original cost of the property. For qualified property rented by the taxpayer, the average net annual rent shall be multiplied by the number of years of the lease for which the taxpayer was originally bound, not to exceed ten years or the end of the third year after the entitlement period, whichever is earlier. The rental of land included in and incidental to the leasing of a building shall not be excluded from the computation;

(8) Motor vehicle shall mean any motor vehicle, semitrailer, or trailer as defined in the Motor Vehicle Registration Act and subject to licensing for operation on the highways;

(9) Nebraska employee shall mean an individual who is either a resident or partial-year resident of Nebraska;

(10) Number of new employees shall mean the excess of the number of equivalent employees employed at the project during a year over the number of equivalent employees during the base year;

(11) Qualified business shall mean any business engaged in the activities listed in subdivisions (b)(i) through (v) of this subdivision or in the storage, warehousing, distribution, transportation, or sale of tangible personal property. Qualified business shall not include any business activity in which eighty percent or more of the total sales are sales to the ultimate consumer of food prepared for immediate consumption or are sales to the ultimate consumer of tangible personal property which is not (a) assembled, fabricated, manufactured, or processed by the taxpayer or (b) used by the purchaser in any of the following activities: