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).
I’d like Public Assets to do a cost-benefit analysis of VEDA. Anecdotally, it seems as if VEDA — a state government loan program that ostensibly helps create jobs in Vermont — often supports businesses that go belly-up or at least fail to produce the number of jobs predicted in their loan applications.
Thank you PAI for your reliable clarity.
I’ve got a term better than “tax credits” or “tax incentives.” These are, to put it simply, “tax breaks.” And they too often go to companies that do not need them and would have developed in Vermont without them.
You guys are great.