The New York City Industrial Development Agency voted yesterday to allow Citigroup to apply $22.1 million in previously awarded tax breaks to purchases for its new Long Island City offices, the same day a report was released criticizing public subsidies to the financial conglomerate as unnecessary and ineffective.

In 1994, Travelers Inc. reached a deal with the IDA — part of the city’s Economic Development Corporation — to receive $22.1 million in sales tax exemptions in exchange for retaining 8,970 New York City jobs and creating 2,100 jobs over the course of 15 years. When Travelers merged with Citicorp to create Citigroup in 1998, the subsidies transferred to Citigroup.

The vote will allow Citigroup to apply the tax breaks to purchases for its Court Square Two development, but will not give the company any additional benefits.

According to IDA, Citigroup employs 12,419 people in the city, well above the number required to comply with Travelers’s tax break deal. The company announced in April that it would cut 17,000 jobs worldwide, including about 1,600 in New York. The layoffs are not expected to imperil Citigroup’s compliance with IDA requirements.

A spokesman for Good Jobs New York, which prepared yesterday’s report together with New Jersey Policy Perspective, attacked the notion of allowing companies to receive public benefits while cutting jobs. It is “atrocious policy,” the spokesman, Dan Steinberg, said.

The report found that, despite the company’s claims to the contrary, public subsidies had little effect on Citigroup’s decisions on where to locate, and that the company often misled governments into thinking it was considering a move when no rival offers had actually been made.

Mr. Steinberg said this “costly bidding war” ignored the fact that location decisions depended more on factors such as a skilled work force and good transportation and telecommunications. “New York has more to offer than any city in the world, and that’s why they’ve been here so many years,” he said.

The report found that since 1989, Citigroup has received $285.9 million in subsidies from the four states the group studies, including $125.5 million in New York. (The other states are New Jersey, Kentucky, and Texas.) It cited the recently announced cuts as evidence that these benefits do little to avoid layoffs.

The report also notes that Citigroup publicly promised in 2004 to add 2,500 New York City jobs over the following two years, but entered into no binding agreements. According to IDA, Citigroup has added 2,270 city jobs since 2004, falling short of its promise.

Although IDA is bound to honor pre-existing deals, officials at the agency and at Good Jobs New York agreed that the Bloomberg administration has pursued a shift away from large corporate subsidy packages.

“We tend not to do these type of deals anymore,” an Economic Development spokesman, Jorge Montalvo, said. “It shows the difference in how the Bloomberg administration works.”

Mr. Steinberg said he was encouraged by “indications that they’re not interested in entering into these wasteful corporate retention deals anymore.”

At its board meeting yesterday, IDA also approved $113 million in new bonds for capital projects at six schools and businesses.