Tony Messenger’s article Jobs is the buzzword of the Missouri Capitol I thought had some great statements that really sum up a lot of my feeling about taxation and job creation.
The question for lawmakers: How to use the government’s power to create those jobs?
It’s a complicated question.
The House, for instance, passed a bill to give tax incentives to Ford to help retain jobs in Missouri, rather than lose them to another state offering more cash.
Then there’s a big push to create the “jobs of tomorrow” by creating special funds — a closing fund, a fund for science and technology businesses, a fund for investing with entrepreneurs.
Those funds need money, and that money, for the most part, comes from either giving companies tax credits or from reduction of income taxes. Both policies reduce the amount of revenue coming into state government.
Such programs, lawmakers and business leaders testified last week, are the core of the “jobs” programs that will pull the state out of its economic doldrums.
Not so fast, offers Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau, who has become a bit of a tax credit curmudgeon over the past couple of years. Crowell testified last week in favor of bill of his, one of many he has that would try to rein in the state’s various “jobs” programs.
Why? Crowell doesn’t believe all those tax credit programs actually create jobs. He’s convinced they cost jobs.
Where? In schools, for one.
One of Crowell’s underlying points — and it seems to apply to so many of the “jobs” bills that get discussed in the Legislature — is that every such bill creates losers as well as winners.
A tax incentive here equals lost revenue somewhere else. To Crowell, that’s the part of the discussion that has been missing. You can’t just talk about creating jobs without talking about what happens on the other side of the equation.
The money has to come from somewhere.
