Minnesota Politics
Corporate Property Tax
I own a successful small business that exports our custom-designed products to about thirty-five countries. We work out of a comfortable assembly facility, but like many small business owners we rent that facility. Many other small business owners in Minnesota work out of their homes. And those small businesses that own their facilities have relatively modest digs. The vast majority of these business owners will receive no benefit from cutting corporate property taxes.
It’s true that a fraction of Minnesota’s small businesses would benefit modestly from cutting corporate property taxes. But the corporations that would receive the lion’s share of the benefit have owners that don’t live in Minnesota – Home Depot, Menards, and WalMart to name a few. And one of the largest corporate welfare recipients would be the owners of the Mall of America, who don’t even live in the United States.
As a Minnesota business owner who wants state revenues to be at a level that will benefit my business by allowing our crumbling infrastructure to be addressed and individual property taxes to be lowered, I’m offended that Minnesota would pass legislation to benefit business owners with no skin in the game – not in MN, not even in the U.S. These large corporations are certainly benefiting from Minnesota’s resources — they should be expected to help pay for them.
