Yes, let’s get the facts straight

It’s not clear why former Vermont Commerce Secretary Kevin Dorn wants to run from the notion that Vermont offers tax credits to businesses that create new jobs. In a recent letter to the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, Dorn criticized both the newspapers and Public Assets Institute for saying Vermont had a tax credit program.

“Let’s start by at least getting the facts straight,” Dorn wrote in his letter of Jan. 8, 2011. “The state does not have a tax credit program as alleged in the editorial and hasn’t since 2006. VEGI (Vermont Employment Growth Incentive) is a cash incentive program that pays companies a small fraction of the new revenues they generate by creating new jobs for Vermonters, and the incentives are only paid after the jobs are created. The Public Assets Institute report that the editorial references completely discredits itself by missing this very basic, but essential point.”

The money for this “cash incentive program” comes out of a business’s tax withholding account. Using tax money to pay a business for creating jobs sounds like a tax credit to me, but let’s let the Tax Department settle it. This is what you find after three clicks on the department’s website: 1. Business. 2. Tax credits. 3. Vermont Employment Growth Incentive (VEGI).