Posted on 07/14/2010 10:31:48 AM PDT by craigs2040
Everyone that knows me knows that I have a special place in my heart for Missouri politics. For us political junkies, there has been lots of excitement. At the end of June, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon called a special session to do two things. 1) Pass tax incentives to keep the Ford plant in Claycomo, Missouri and 2) reform Missouri’s state pension plan for future state employees. A 20+ hour filibuster against the $150 million tax credit proposal ended this morning in the Missouri Senate.
I’m not a fan of corporate tax incentives. Ford has (not publicly, but to politicians) threatened to leave Missouri if they do not receive tax incentives to keep the plan open. How much will this cost Missourians? $150,000,000 over 10 years, or $15,000,000 per year. In other words, Missouri taxpayers will be subsidizing the salaries of these workers, if they stay) to the tune of $4,054 per employee, per year. Multiply that times the 10 year period and Missouri taxpayers are nearly paying the salaries of these 3,700 employees, paying the equivalent of $40,540 per employee.
(Excerpt) Read more at thepoliticalpanorama.wordpress.com ...
Neither link worked for me.
I agree. I’m also tired if these shakedows of the taxpayer by corporations. If they can’t figure out a way to make a profit without tax breaks, then they need to get a new business model or reduce salaries.
The Automotive industry is just like the rest of corporate America, paying too much for allot of poor performance from both salaried and unionized people.
Are these tax breaks or tax payer money’s being paid to Ford?
I’m sorry — the link should be up now. If not, here it is.
These are tax breaks/credit toward paying Missouri taxes being given to Ford, yes.
So this is money that won’t come in to the state rather than money collected from taxpayers and being given to Ford like the bailout was for GM? Is Ford considering moving out to a more receptive area to lower their costs thereby raising their profit margin? Capitalism is what it sounds like. I’d pay as little tax as I could get away with too. It looks more like Ford is doing a ‘shakedown’ of the gov’t not the taxpayer. It is unfortunate that the gov’t will then ‘shakedown’ the taxpayer.
I know of a certain ex-Vise-Grip plant in a smaller town in Nebraska that would LOVE to have Ford move there.
I also dislike corporate tax incentives. I generally much rather see the states simply cut taxes if they feel businesses need an incentive and let the market choose the winners and losers.
Instead, we normally get a state doing ludicrous things like providing Honda large subsidies while denying equal treatment to GM... or providing Kia large subsidies while denying equal treatment to Ford.
However, I do see something different in Missouri’s proposal - while it does target the auto industry, the tax breaks are open to ALL manufacturers. Toyota and GM both have facilities there that they can choose to invest in. Hyundai could build a second factory in the US there if they wanted and take advantage of the tax breaks...
Was it a shakedown by Ford? Arguably, yes... but the payoff is only a small fraction of what Honda got from Indiana, Toyota got from Mississippi, Kia got from Georgia, Nissan got from Tennessee, Mercedes got from Alabama, BMW got from South Carolina, etc.... and Ford isn’t the only company that gets the breaks in this case... the others are all on equal footing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.