{"id":34746,"date":"2013-03-01T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T17:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34746"},"modified":"2013-03-01T08:27:41","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T14:27:41","slug":"elections-have-consequences-part-cxxix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34746","title":{"rendered":"Elections Have Consequences, Part CXXIX"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saint Paul business owners, trapped between Saint Paul’s crushing property tax burden and Dayton and the DFL’s tax hikes, are\u00a0finally<\/em>\u00a0speaking out<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Smart Minnesota businesses, in other words, got a head start on the exodus.<\/p>\n

I know that MN Wire is far from the only one.<\/p>\n

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

“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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not just (sarcasm on) big plutocrats (sarsasm off) like Wagner. \u00a0It’s small service providers, like this woman:<\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

Question to the businesspeople involved: \u00a0how active were you in trying to\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>get Mark Dayton, Chris Coleman and the rest of them elected? \u00a0Just curious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saint Paul business owners, trapped between Saint Paul’s crushing property tax burden and Dayton and the DFL’s tax hikes, are\u00a0finally\u00a0speaking 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dayton-dustbowl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34746"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34749,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34746\/revisions\/34749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}