BOISE, Idaho, Oct. 28, 2014—The nonpartisan Tax Foundation today released its 2015 State Business Tax Climate Index, and the report ranked Idaho 19th best in the nation. Hardly a placing worth crowing about, said the state director for Idaho’s largest small-business association, who suggested avenues to improvement.
The index measured a state’s corporate taxes, individual income taxes, sales tax, unemployment insurance tax and property-tax rank to come up with an overall score. Idaho came out No. 19 in the nation. “The absence of a major tax is a common factor among many of the top ten states,” wrote the index’s authors. Idaho has no such absence in any of them.
“Idaho is surrounded on three sides by states with friendlier tax climates,” said Suzanne Budge, Idaho state director for the National Federation of Independent Business. “It’s time for us to make needed improvements to match them, and I know just where to start. We need to eliminate Idaho’s outdated and unfair personal property tax, which applies only to business and has been eliminated for every other taxpayer. We made a good start in previous years by cutting out the first $100,000 value for tax purposes. Now it’s time to dump the entire tax. I realize this was not one of the index’s components, but some of its components are not unaffected by it. We also need to make our corporate and individual income tax rates competitive with our neighbors.”
With 350,000 dues-paying members across the nation, including more than 4,500 in Idaho, NFIB is the nation’s largest and leading small-business association. More information about small business, especially its difference from big business, can be found in this media kit with brief, single pages of bulleted information.
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For more than 70 years, the National Federation of Independent Business has been the Voice of Small Business, taking the message from Main Street to the halls of Congress and all 50 state legislatures. NFIB annually surveys its members on state and federal issues vital to their survival as America’s economic engine and biggest creator of jobs. NFIB’s educational mission is to remind policymakers that small businesses are not smaller versions of bigger businesses; they have very different challenges and priorities.
National Federation of Independent Business/Idaho
802 W. Bannock, Ste. 301
Boise, ID 83702
208-345-6632
