Remember last year? While New York and California, where noted conservative tools Andrew Cuomo and Jerry Brown instituted sweeping tax cuts and austere budgets, opted to cut budgets and rein in spending, Illinois swam against the tide, jacked up business taxes in a downright Daytonian orgy of confiscation.
So how’s that going for ’em?
Doug Whitley, president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, says his members aren’t happy with the state’s approach toward businesses.
“Big-name, household-name companies that are long-standing Illinois businesses have begun to rattle the cage and say, you know, this isn’t the best environment,” he says.
The tax hikes were serious and, for companies rattled by the simultaneous collapses of the housing and credit markets, a kick in the corporate teeth:
Construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar was among the first corporate giants to complain in January, when Illinois raised the corporate income tax rate from 4.8 percent to 7 percent.
The latest complaint comes from an iconic company along the Chicago River: CME Group, the parent of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade.
CME Group Chairman Terry Duffy spoke to NBC about moving the company’s headquarters out of Illinois.
“All our transactions are taxed in Illinois. Whether they’re coming from Mumbai or some other part of the world, they’re being taxed here in Illinois. That’s absolutely unjust,” he said.
Retail giant Sears is also making noise about leaving, as the tax incentives that kept the company in Illinois almost 25 years ago are set to expire.
And that’s the big companies, like Sears; in Minnesota terms, companies like USBank, that squeedged tax concessions out of the city to stay in Saint Paul while smaller companies decamped en masse for Eagan, Woodbury and Minnetonka.
Some suggest the big-name companies are just posturing to get larger tax breaks, a strategy some smaller employers complain they can’t use.
“There are 372,000 companies operating in Illinois. We cannot afford to give hundred-million-dollar deals to all those companies; it’s inefficient and impractical. What we really need to do is talk about creating a level playing field environment that makes Illinois a magnet,” Whitley says.
The “we can’t give everyone a hundred-million-dollar break” bit is just a dumb strawman – but it leads you to the “level playing field”; cut taxes, and make them low, but fair, across the board.
Y’know – the way Minnesota’s also aren’t.
It’s like some people can’t figure out that prosperous and rich people don’t get that way by ignoring incentives. Make it hard to do business and cut the profits to be earned, and a state or nation can expect fewer people to do business. Duh.
It’s wrong in two ways. First they get tax breaks…..basically corporate welfare. Then they get taxed and regulated to death.
Both businesses and individuals…..everyone should pay something, but at lower rates.
The most “level” playing field of all is one devoid of players.
As we have learned and re-learned during the state government shut down, the services the state offers really don’t impact most people who aren’t wholly dependent on the state. If I had really needed to stop at a rest stop in the last few weeks, I might have been peeved. (I am peeved that the rest stop -and closeted homosexual meeting place- along 10/169 in Ramsey had a few thousand dollars worth of barricades and an electronic message board in front of it for the shut-down yet when it closed for re-construction a few years back had one simple sign tacked over the ‘Rest Area Ahead’ sign that said ‘Closed’ and a concrete barrier at the entrance). As was learned in the whole Miller/Coors debacle, the state couldn’t even get a simple licensing issue right yet wants to instruct business in how to conduct their business, who they should hire, etc. I would imagine a state that kept its taxes low, its regulation simple and its services, while few, efficient and necessary would attract many to its borders. I would imagine that state would have a last name of Dakota.
Now recognizing the senator from the great state of East Dakota…
And ask the Hollywood crowd how much tax incentives figure into where they shoot their next movie.
Yeah, the hollywood thing. The liberals in Hollywood film whereever the taxes are the lowest and/or they get the most free stuff.
Vancouver BC. Toronto. Even anti-business states like Michigan give freebes to get movies filmed there. Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino was filmed in Mich instead of St Paul because Michigan gave them tax breaks, while Minnesota had high taxes.
Noted left-winger Alec Baldwin is a supply-sider for his own industry ( http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/16/alec-baldwin-supply-sider/ ) yet believes something completely different for the industries 99.5% of the world work in. The left knows lower tax rates work to bring in more tax revenue, but what’s the point of being in power if you can’t make others tremble at the thought of what you might do to them?
NCR moved from Dayton OH to Duluth GA, to save many millions a year. It isn’t so much taxes but the total cost of business. Over 1000 jobs lost. Maybe if someone like John Kasich had been elected sooner …
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