Who\u2019s really paying for Florida. As Matt Galka tells us, a new report about the state\u2019s biggest companies says its not them, and they\u2019re dodging taxes.<\/p>\n\n

 <\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s Governor makes his agenda pretty clear. \u201cThe most important thing you can do to change lives is give someone a job,” said Rick Scott at January’s inauguration.<\/p>\n

Scott\u2019s quest for more jobs even took him to Philadelphia earlier this week to try and poach more companies.\u00a0But a new study says corporations in Florida aren\u2019t paying their fair share.<\/p>\n

\u201cFloridians should know that there\u2019s more money coming out of our pockets from the public to the largest corporations in this state, in terms of contracts and subsidies, than those companies pay back on their profits taxes to state governments nationally,” said Dan Krassner with Integrity Florida.<\/p>\n

The government watchdog’s new study<\/a> looked at 17 Fortune 500 corporations in the state. It found that the 13 profitable ones paid, on average, below the state\u2019s tax rate. Of the combined $35 billion the companies made, they paid less than a billion in taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell the question is who should pay for Florida? Who should pay for Florida today and our future?” asked Krassner.<\/p>\n

The study says that taxpayers provided more than $2 billion dollars to the companies in the form of state contracts. The Governor wants to eliminate the corporate tax rate all together. At the very least, exempt more profits from being taxed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a mixed bag, which is like a lot of things, there\u2019s no guarantee that a lower rate produces anymore jobs at all,” said Alan Stonecipher, who helped author the report.<\/p>\n

If the proposal goes through, it would mean less money for the state budget. Exempting more corporate income has been scoffed at in the past, but a bill that would do just that has already cleared two committees ahead of next week\u2019s session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who\u2019s really paying for Florida. As Matt Galka tells us, a new report about the state\u2019s biggest companies says its not them, and they\u2019re dodging taxes.   Florida\u2019s Governor makes his agenda pretty clear. \u201cThe most important thing you can do to change lives is give someone a job,” said Rick Scott at January’s inauguration. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24968"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24976,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24968\/revisions\/24976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}