Elections Have Consequences, Part CXXIX

Saint Paul business owners, trapped between Saint Paul’s crushing property tax burden and Dayton and the DFL’s tax hikes, are finally speaking out:

Paul Wagner’s family has manufactured and sold conductive wire to the medical and defense industries for nearly 50 years, but he and his wife haven’t ruled out moving the entire company from St. Paul to Wisconsin, where they already maintain two-thirds of their operations.

Smart Minnesota businesses, in other words, got a head start on the exodus.

I know that MN Wire is far from the only one.

Proposed taxes on business transactions and a possible increase to Minnesota’s minimum wage could doubly impact their decision to stay or go.

“In the past three years, there’s been 12 new costs (added) to hiring employees,” said Wagner, president and CEO of Minnesota Wire on Energy Park Drive.

It’s not just (sarcasm on) big plutocrats (sarsasm off) like Wagner.  It’s small service providers, like this woman:

Stephanie Laitala took out a second mortgage on her home and maxed out credit cards to open Owl Bookkeeping in St. Paul a decade ago. Starting out, she paid vendors and employees before herself, sometimes skipping her own paychecks entirely. The idea of a new sales tax on her accounting services leaves her cold, and one step closer to going back to working for someone else.

Wagner and Laitala joined a handful of fellow business owners Thursday, Feb. 28, at Minnesota Wire to speak out against DFL Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed tax package.

The governor’s plan would lower the state sales tax rate from 6.875 percent to 5.5 percent but also broaden it, applying the tax to clothing sales of more than $100, business-to-business transactions, and memberships to gyms and other organizations.

Someone should tell PiPress writer Fred Melo that taking $2 Billion more out of the economy is not “lowering” a tax.

Question to the businesspeople involved:  how active were you in trying to not get Mark Dayton, Chris Coleman and the rest of them elected?  Just curious.

6 thoughts on “Elections Have Consequences, Part CXXIX

  1. The prosperous Jim Scheibel days are back in St Paul.

    Just like the early 1990’s.

    It’s called DFL fatigue.

  2. Time for more “back surgery.”

    How about a two-for-one sale one electronic pull tabs?

  3. I have an idea for opening a MN business: A truck rental company that specializes in one-way excursions from the Twin Cities to locales in Wisconsin. We’ll drive the truck back (for a fee, of course).

  4. I haven’t heard whether the sales tax will extend to services such as speaking to legislators on behalf of special interest groups. Will lobbyists pay it?

    How about independent contractors hired to do, say, computer programming for a specific project? Or to write the documentation for it?
    .

  5. So your’re still happy to pay for a “better” Minnesota? That’s something for Joe Average to ask themself going into the ’14 elections.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.