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Understanding Business Taxation

View Document Online (PDF). NEW!

Full name: Understanding Business Taxation: An Educational Guide for Minnesotans

Summary: Anyone following the historic 2005 legislative session is aware that there is disagreement among legislators and policy makers regarding this topic. There has been a great deal of discussion and disagreement on several questions regarding the taxing of businesses:

• Are businesses paying their “fair share” of taxes?

• Are businesses paying too much in taxes to be competitive with businesses in other states and around the world?

• Are businesses are being treated unequally from one business type to another?

Each advocate group for one of these views is armed with a thicket of statistics to back their claims. Even policy makers have trouble making sense of the jumble of charts, graphs, and tables presented by lobbyists across the political spectrum in their testimony before legislative committees. The average citizen tends simply to tune out.

We offer this booklet, Understanding Business Taxation , to help bring some clarity to the debate, add to the knowledge of Minnesotans regarding what good business tax policy principles are, and examine Minnesota’s current business taxes using those principles.