PARSIPPANY — Honeywell International Inc. is expected to leave Morris Plains for North Carolina soon, resulting in nearly 800 jobs being lost. Assemblywoman BettyLou DeCroce says that New Jersey’s unfriendly business climate and tax policies are the cause.
“It is clear that Democrats do not have the ability to understand what their tax policies are doing to New Jersey,” said DeCroce (R-Morris). “People are losing their jobs, and it should be a wake-up call to residents.”
New Jersey has been ranked the worst and most expensive state to own a business by the Tax Foundation for years. In 2013 North Carolina overhauled its tax system and jumped from 44th in the nation to the third-best state to have a business. Currently, North Carolina’s corporate income tax rate is one of the lowest in the nation at three percent, and will drop to 2.5 percent in 2019 as revenues continue to increase. The state also just passed an increase in tax credits for jobs created.
New Jersey is going in a different direction, having passed the nation’s second highest corporate business tax in June. New Jersey’s corporate business tax revenue has declined four times in the past seven years.
“North Carolina continues to become more business friendly and its economy has boomed while our state languishes behind even with the national economy booming,” continued DeCroce. “Instead of raising tax rates on businesses we should be lowering them. No matter how many tax credits are granted it will never be enough to truly compete, create jobs and retain them.”
In 2015 Honeywell received a $40 million tax credit to stay in New Jersey. The company said it is relocating because it needs to be in a place more appealing to millennials as it aspires toward a more digitally driven business model.
Gov. Phil Murphy has touted New Jersey’s educated workforce as a reason for businesses to relocate here, but the state is a national leader in millennial out migration and the outmigration of college students. Murphy’s effort to make the state’s economy more technologically driven has also been undermined by Honeywell’s reason for leaving.
“The Democrats’ tax logic is a paradox. They are too cavalier in giving-out credits to lower the tax burden, and then they raise business taxes anyway. It makes no sense.
“As a small-business owner, it is incompetent and careless tax policies that are frustrating. The bottom line is that taxpayers are the ones who face the consequences of poor decision making,” concluded DeCroce.
