Florida Gov. Rick Scott is in Philadelphia today and tomorrow peddling the attractions of the Sunshine State to Pennsylvania businesses. On this frigid February day I’ll give him the warmer weather.
But that’s about all I’ll concede.
Florida governor Rick Scott is in Philadelphia today and tomorrow peddling the attractions of the Sunshine State to Pennsylvania businesses. On this frigid February day, I’ll give him the warmer weather.
But that’s about all I’ll concede.
You see Governor Scott is trying to tell Pennsylvania businesses that their taxes would be lower in Florida. But they wouldn’t. To be sure, Pennsylvania has that famous sore thumb 9.99% corporate net income tax (which, by the way, few corporations actually pay). But when you consider all business taxes, Pennsylvania businesses pay less than Florida’s (as a share of Gross State Product and as a share of all taxes paid). For more detail and sources, see our memo to the media distributed earlier today.
Gov. Scott is also trumpeting a job creation approach that doesn’t work. Business-census data show that no state gets a meaningful number of jobs by stealing them from other states. Instead, virtually all job growth comes from the expansion of existing businesses and the creation of new in-state startups. Good Jobs First, the D.C.-based business subsidy accountability clearinghouse, has done a series of studies on this, including this one funded by the Heinz Endowments on which KRC partnered.
While job piracy doesn’t work, it does waste taxpayer resources on ineffective tax breaks and subsidies. This deprives states, as a group, of the resources they need to invest in the foundation of a strong economy: education, skills, infrastructure, and innovation.
Business leader Doug Neidich makes some of the same points in his Philadelphia Daily News piece on Scott’s visit, published today.
Neidich, CEO of GreenWorks LLC, in Harrisburg, also points out that Scott is fact-challenged on Pennsylvania vs. Florida business taxes, and has faced a barrage of criticism for his refusal to accept climate science, even as The National Geographic calls Miami one of the “most vulnerable” coastal cities to rising seas.
Neidich offers a possible explanation for why Scott flew north into the bitter cold: he faces what Salon recently described as a “corruption spiral” back home.