Nevada Tax Climate Remains Favorable to Business

Tax Foundation report ranks Nevada fourth among states as favorable for business. Despite these conditions, the state has the highest unemployment at 14.4 percent.

CARSON CITY - Nevada remains the state with the fourth-best tax climate for business, according to the 2011 rankings released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation.

The nonprofit education organization put Nevada behind South Dakota, Alaska and Wyoming in how its tax system affects businesses. You may take this into consideration if you need to relocate your landscape business or find a job. Other states such as New York and California are notoriously unfriendly towards small businesses.

''The top eight tax systems all raise sufficient revenue without imposing one or two of the three major state taxes - sales taxes, personal income taxes and corporate income taxes,'' said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation.

Nevada has no corporate or personal income taxes, but its state sales tax rate, 6.85 percent, ranked 43rd worst. Counting local taxes, individual counties have sales tax rates as high as 8.1 percent.

Despite its high ranking, Nevada leads the nation with a 14.4 percent unemployment rate. Nearly 193,000 fewer Nevadans hold jobs today than did in May 2007, according to the Employment Security Division.

The state's inability to create jobs has led some politicians in the fall campaign to emphasize that the state needs to spend money to improve its educational system in order to provide the skilled work force companies need. Others have maintained it must keep its low tax base to attract business.

- Courtesy of Las Vegas Review-Journal