The new international tax rankings have just been released. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and its economists report that America’s corporate competitiveness is in decline, and their studies show that for the 17th consecutive year, tax rates have declined in non-U.S. countries while tax rates in America remains next to worst.
In its report released August 13, 2008 entitled U.S. Corporate Taxes Now 50 Percent Higher than OECD Average, a stark picture is painted on competitive tax rates. Through the study, “the key to creating a growth-oriented corporate income tax system is to impose a reasonably low tax rate with few exemptions.” As the article concludes, citizens should ask the presidential (and I suggest local) candidates their plan to restoring American competitiveness.
Nations abroad are slashing their rates to attract capital and jobs. This I do know: capital and businesses will follow the low cost, least restrictive and entrepreneurial environments, be they Barberton, Ohio or Bangalore, India. A colleague of mine returned from a business trip to Pune, India and Bangalore, India. Pune is India’s version of Detroit, serving the automotive supply industry. Bangalore is their version of our Silicon Valley. When he entered one of Bangalore’s 3,000 acre corporate campus clusters, where companies such as Intel, Cisco Systems, HP, AMD, Microsoft, Motorola, Yahoo and others are located, he saw into the future, so to speak.
We here is Summit County need to not only reduce taxes for large, visible companies, but to create a low-tax, entrepreneurial environment, where we can recruit 100 companies with 20 employees willing to locate here. We need to strategically leverage our university system, our lower cost of living relative to other major cities, and our infrastructure environment to accomplish this.
Time and again, studies show that lower taxes ultimately result in more tax collections. Here in Summit County, as a possible future Fiscal Officer, I plan on following that mantra.
