Lots of incentives offered to businesses, especially at the city level, are contingent on providing some number of jobs in a specific place. They want you to have to give locals jobs if you need to hire, and they want those locals spending money in some particular place. They don't want to spend money helping companies with suburban/exurban workers that never come to the city, and that are seeing local headcount erode as replacements can live anywhere.
> How is this even regulated and controlled?
Same as... most things? There's all kinds of stuff you can lie about and be fine as long as you don't get caught. Claiming you have a full office while openly having a 100% WFH policy is probably not a great way to get away with that kind of fraud, however.
Self reporting, much like all tax breaks. They tell the city "we have this percent of our employee base required to be in the office". But they can't just lie because they might get audited.
