Nebraska Tax Climate Good for Fremont!

Nebraska Tax Climate Good for Fremont! Main Photo

5 Mar 2012


State News

If a business is looking to expand or build a new location, which state is best?

Texas? South Dakota? Florida? When it comes to the potential tax burden, Nebraska tops the list.

That's according to the nonpartisan tax research group the Tax Foundation, which Wednesday released its 2012 report on business taxes titled "Location Matters: A Comparative Analysis of State Tax Costs on Business."

The report said Nebraska has the best overall tax climate for new businesses and also is the best place to locate new call centers or corporate headquarters. The state also ranked as the second-best place for new research and development facilities and for new capital-intensive manufacturers and new labor-intensive manufacturers.

"Despite having a 7.81 percent corporate tax rate, Nebraska reduces its overall business tax burden through the use of generous property tax credits, investment credits and job tax credits," the report said.

Barry Kennedy, president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called the report "obviously, very good news."

"I think the key thing it probably points out with our new firms is that the tax incentives the governor and the Legislature have installed the last seven or eight years are working," Kennedy said.

He said it's always important when recruiting companies to get them to drill down past the perception that Nebraska has high property taxes and high income taxes and find out what the actual costs of doing business are.

Jason Smith, vice president of the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development, called the results "really, really positive."

"I do think there's a case to be made that Lincoln and Nebraska both are really competitive in tax climate for targeted employers," Smith said.

He said he was particularly impressed with how well Nebraska ranked in tax competitiveness for research and development.

In addition to being the second-best state for new R&D companies, Nebraska also ranked as the second-best state for mature R&D firms.

"One of the really encouraging things was R&D, because we're spending a lot of money trying to recruit new R&D," Smith said.

He said he was pleased to see that Nebraska also ranks high in tax climate for mature firms. The Tax Foundation report said the state has the ninth-best tax climate for those companies.

In addition to having the second-best tax climate for existing R&D firms, Nebraska ranked 10th for existing capital-intensive manufacturing and fifth for labor-intensive manufacturing.

"It's good that there was no wide spread between mature and new (industries)," Smith said.

Kennedy said Nebraska's ranking in the report will help in marketing the state to potential businesses.

Business site selectors, "look very closely at these types of reports," he said.