01/24/2008
Letter to the editor from NFIB member Randall Bradley
As we come into the campaign season, people might want to start asking our candidates for state and local government what they plan to do to keep Iowa competitive for new businesses and jobs.
Everyone hears each piece of legislation our state government passes in isolation. But few ever add it up to understand what all of this does to affect our attractiveness to new business, so I thought I might give a short concrete example.
I have a restaurant in Iowa and one in Missouri. They are the same model of building sitting on the same size lot.
My Iowa property tax is over $36,000 this year. In Missouri, I pay a combination of personal property and real estate tax for a total of $11,300, or $25,000 less than Iowa. Our minimum wage is $7.25/hour versus $6.65/hour in Missouri. With payroll taxes added, this will cost me about $17,000/year more in Iowa. For waste disposal, I pay about $3,500/year in Missouri and $8,500/year in Iowa due to higher regulation of landfill use in Iowa.
The difference in just those three areas will cost me $47,000 more to operate in Iowa than it will in Missouri this year! And if I do make a profit, the top income tax rate in Missouri is 6 percent versus a top rate of 9 percent in Iowa. In my situation, would you build your next restaurant in Iowa or Missouri?
Last year I went to one of the "meet the legislator" meetings. I pointed out they had raised the minimum wage, raised taxes (cigarettes) and proposed legislation threatening our right-to-work law. I asked if they were going to do anything to show potential new businesses that they had not pulled the welcome mat from Iowa's door. Their only response was they knew the property tax problem ought to be fixed. As you know, that did not happen.
As you talk to candidates, you might ask how Iowa is going to grow our economy with the kind of legislation we are getting.
Randall Bradley
Agency, Iowa
