State Once Again Bragging About No Income Tax

April 28, 2004

Recently I picked up the April 5, 2004 issue of Fortune Magazine, the one with the latest listing of the Fortune 500. I didn't make the list again this year, darn the luck, but I did find something very interesting. Inside was a special advertising section. For all I know it was regionalized and only subscribers in our area got to read it. I hope not. It was very impressive, something the whole country needs to see. Something every Tennessean needs to see. It probably cost a fortune to run, pardon the expression, but I believe it's the right face for Tennessee.

 

Entitled “On the Tennessee Fast Track” it was 25 pages touting the economic development initiatives of our state. It was subsidized by ads for Tennessee companies like FedEx and Bridgestone and AIG so, hopefully, it didn't cost the taxpayers an arm and a leg. I learned some things about my state that I didn't know.

 

For instance, did you know that Nashville and Memphis are ranked in the top five in Expansion Management magazine's list of the “50 hottest cities for expansion?” Me either. How about the fact that Tennessee is second only to California in Japanese investment in the United States? Pretty impressive facts.

 

A couple of things jumped out at me as I read the 25 pages. First, they had a graph labeled “Where The Jobs Are.” I was stunned to see that government is in a virtual tie with manufacturing for second-largest non-farm employment. The trade, transportation and utilities sector is first. Government , with 15.4 percent of the pie, ranked above professional and business services with 12 percent and education and health services with 11.5 percent. We have almost twice as many people in government as we do the leisure and hospitality sector. Is that not amazing?

 

Then, later in the section, the other item that jumped out at me. You know how they pull a quote out of an article and put it in big, bold letters, wanting to make special emphasis of it? Here's what they chose on page 12: “The state is a tax haven where there is no income tax on wages . . .” Wow! A tax haven. I like that. But how long can we remain a tax haven when government is the second-largest sector in the state?

 

Governor Bredesen has the right idea. Sing out to the rest of the country, and the world, for that matter, that Tennessee is a great place to do business. Shout out the fact that we don't have a state income tax. I've always advocated making sure we're the lowest-taxed state in the union then putting that on our license plates. Sure beats the heck out of “Sounds good to me” or whatever the inane slogan du jour happens to be.

 

We have a lot to be proud of in Tennessee. We have a lot to brag about. It's a great place to not only do business but to live and raise your family. Those who move in from other parts of the country, especially the North and California, appreciate our relatively low taxes. Those of us who have been here for decades sometimes take that for granted but we shouldn't.

 

It's a wonderful calling card to say “no state income tax.” That's music to the ears of the overtaxed in other parts of the country. Right now Governor Bredesen is singing that song at the top of his voice. I just hope in his second term he doesn't go tone deaf. If he does, I know several hundred thousand Tennesseans who will remind him of the tune with their horns.