Insights
How deals in this region actually get done — market practice, terms, and the legal mechanics behind them.
Minneapolis — Runners on the Stone Arch Bridge at dusk, July 2023. Photo: Dave Madgett
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The statute sunset for tax years beginning after December 31, 2024. The Department of Revenue's guidance page, updated in December 2025, carries no expiration notice. Here is what actually survives.
Read it →Northern Dealbook · August 7, 2026 · 6 min read
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Minn. Stat. § 181.988 makes employee non-competes void, blocks the choice-of-law workaround, and awards fees to employees. The sale-of-business exception survives intact. For a buyer, that combination changes what you are actually acquiring.
A 45 percent seed capital credit and a 35 percent angel fund credit make North Dakota the most generous of the four states for early-stage investors — by a wide margin, and with the smallest economy behind it.
Section 1202 got its biggest expansion in fifteen years: a tiered holding period, a $15 million cap, and a $75 million asset test. But the list of businesses that cannot qualify maps uncomfortably well onto the Upper Midwest economy.
A March 2025 no-action letter lets issuers satisfy Rule 506(c)'s verification requirement through minimum investment amounts and self-certification. For a regional fund choosing between 506(b) and 506(c), that changes the answer.
With no personal or corporate income tax, South Dakota has nothing for an investment credit to offset. Its early-stage capital policy is direct lending rather than tax expenditure — a genuinely different instrument with different consequences.
We aggregated every Form D in our record across Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The headline number is $4.33 billion. Nearly half of it went to pooled vehicles, banks, and real estate — and North Dakota's entire eight-figure reputation rests on a single 2018 filing.
Wisconsin's 25 percent angel investment credit carries no sunset and is live for the 2025 tax year. Minnesota's expired after 2024. For anyone raising on either side of the St. Croix, that asymmetry is now a structuring fact.