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6/22/2012 |
Community/Chamber |
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Chamber Advocates for Positive Business Climate |
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Chamber Advocates for Positive Business Climate President & CEO Speaks at Public Meeting for Blue Ribbon Commission on Tax Reform
Contact:
Jessica M.L. Thompson, Marketing & Communications Director
270-781-3200; jessica@bgchamber.com
BOWLING GREEN, KY--Chamber President & CEO Ron Bunch, CEcD gave remarks at Tuesday's public meeting for the Blue Ribbon Commission on Tax Reform. As part of the Chamber's strategic initiative to continuously improve the positive business climate in South Central Kentucky, Bunch's remarks centered on the following areas:
- Broadening the state's tax base by expanding and attracting targeted businesses, which conduct more than 50% of their business outside of the Commonwealth and bring new money into the economy. Click here for more information.
- Positioning Kentucky to better compete with other states and countries in economic development retention, expansion, and attraction projects.
- Avoidance of increases in taxes on businesses, especially as we enter this fragile, slow economic recovery process.
- Simplification of the tax code, allowing business to shift undue compliance costs to job creation and reinvestment.
Bunch's remarks reinforced the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce's positions to support growth-oriented tax policies that improve the competitiveness of Kentucky businesses' in the national and global marketplace. Please find links below to the Kentucky Chamber materials:
Targeted Business Growth Bunch emphasized that growing the state's tax base should be accomplished by expanding and attracting targeted businesses to Kentucky.
Because more than 50% of sales by targeted businesses occur outside of Kentucky, their growth, by definition, brings new economic activity to the area. These companies have positive direct, indirect, and induced economic benefits that drive job growth and support many other businesses that all enhance tax revenue.
Bunch also submitted to the Commission a landmark study from The Tax Foundation and KPMG LLP, titled Location Matters: A Comparative Analysis of State Tax Costs on Business.
The Tax Foundation/KPMG LLP study submitted by Bunch is a landmark, apples-to-apples comparison of corporate tax costs in the 50 states. With the study's model, economists analyzed state taxes as applied to seven business scenarios, resulting in a comprehensive resource of real-world tax burden comparisons across all 50 states. Read The Tax Foundation/KPMG LLP study here.
These results show that, in particular, Kentucky's tax burdens are not as competitive as desired and are significantly less competitive for several key targeted business sectors. An excerpt of the rankings is shown below:
| | Mature Firms | New Firms | | Overall Competitiveness | 18th | 7th | | Corporate Headquarters | 12th | 6th | | Research & Development | 35th | 9th | | Retail | 17th | 6th | | Call Centers | 13th | 12th | | Capital-Intensive Manufacturing | 24th | 35th | | Labor-Intensive Manufacturing | 17th | 11th |
More Details about the Blue Ribbon Commission on Tax Reform In January, Governor Beshear announced a Blue Ribbon Commission on Tax Reform. The Commission's mandate is to study and build consensus around a set of policy solutions with the goals of fairness, competitiveness, simplicity and compliance, elasticity and adequacy. For more information about the Blue Ribbon Tax Commission, click here: http://ltgovernor.ky.gov/taxreform/Pages/default.aspx. About the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce Incorporated in 1935, the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce is a 5-Star Accredited Chamber by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and was named the 2009 Chamber of the Year by the American Chamber of Commerce Executives. As the fourth largest chamber in Kentucky, the Chamber serves as a premier business advocate for its more than 1,300 partners and is the driving force for economic development in South Central Kentucky. Its primary goals are to promote growth and success in the business community, reaching its small business partners and those in large industries alike. With leadership programs, governmental relations projects, educational initiatives and involvement opportunities, the Chamber aims to support the community and its neighbors in order to enhance the business climate and continue to grow the region.
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