Thursday, September 24, 2009

New Jersey: The Worst Place To Do Business in America

The national Tax Foundation has released its 2010 State Business Tax Climate, and well, let's just say embattled incumbent Jon Corzine isn't going to find much fodder for campaign commercials here. Chris Christie, on the other hand....

So where does New Jersey stand? Do you even have to ask? Then Bob Ingle will answer:

Guess who is dead last? Oh, go on take a stab at it. That’s right. Us.

South Dakota has the best business tax climate, although as Corzine told us, North Dakota has better unemployment numbers. New Jersey is No. 50.

The Tax Foundation said: “New Jersey has only one tax that scores dead last, property taxes, but its overall ranking is 50th because it has no competitive taxes. The best it can muster is a middle-of-the-pack 25th on unemployment insurance, the least heavily weighed sub-index, while scoring poorly on the three biggest state-level taxes: corporate income (10th worst) personal income (4th worst) and general sales (13th worst).

We’ve been last since 2007. This year our overall score fell from 3.90 to 3.60.

Take a look at the ten best and ten worst states to do business in, and then look at the overall financial status of the bottom ten, and then ask yourself, which party controls the bottom ten, and which one controls most of the top ten?

Do you even have to ask?

10 Best States:

South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Nevada, Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, Delaware, Washington, Utah.


10 Worst States:

New Jersey, New York, California, Ohio, Iowa, Maryland, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont.


TaxProf makes the following observation as well:

Interestingly, all ten of the states with the worst business tax climates voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and five of the ten states with the best business tax climates voted for John McCain (South Dakota #1, Wyoming (#2), Alaska (#3), Montana (#6), and Utah (#10).

A good point regarding taxes as made by the Foundation:

Good state tax systems levy low, flat rates on the broadest bases possible, and they treat all taxpayers the same. Variation in the tax treatment of different industries favors one economic activity or decision over another. The more riddled a tax system is with these politically motivated preferences the less likely it is that business decisions will be made in response to market forces.

Just think of what America will look like once Obama and the Democrats put in a system of subsidies and rebates based on their most favored groups and policies. Yup, a whole nation that looks just like New Jersey....

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