The poster presentation, Transportation n, the Economy and the Environment: Local Job Creation Tax Credit- Biz tax credits for local hires equal less car trips will show that employment and transportation are intrinsically linked and that businesses, the consumer and the environment would benefit from a Local Job Creation Tax Credit.
Though the Local Job Creation Tax Credit isn’t exactly comparable to Bogotá’s car free day, when an early am ban on vehicles from the capital city of 7 million people provided a 25 to 30 percent decrease in air pollution, the plan identifies that local economies and businesses can really thrive by creating more jobs for non-commuting local residents, while contributing to robust economies, with improved air quality to boot.
The Local Job Creation Tax Credit is not just about an environmental upside and decreasing vehicle use: a side-step that removes hours spent on wheels just to get to and from work, to a job minutes away from a worker’s own front door. But, it’s about manifold consequences that are more than just a solution to the problem of getting there. It’s a change that would build up our neighbors and neighborhoods and increase a company’s bottom line by expanding the number of home-town employees, increase family time, including time to spend money at local businesses.
Hiring local job seekers and getting tax credits in return, contributes to fewer cars on the roads, increases incentives for businesses to establish and promote services central to a community. If business leaders only want to talk about efficiency and productivity-- and how to get rid of more employees, and outsource jobs for lower pay, workers will remain jobless, families will move out of the area and business sales will decline.
A solution researched by a non-partisan group in the mid-nineties was a Human Employment Tax Credit. This incentive to hire, developed by Senators Graham (D-FL), Senator Roth (R-DEL), Claude Cheysson, a former French Foreign Minister and European Community commissioner; and Jacques de Groote, one of the International Monetary Fund's most creative executive directors, was meant to counteract the outsourcing trend, which has since cost the US millions of jobs.
Even if the economy is experiencing a down trend, those who are employed might spend less; but they'll still pay taxes, make purchases and give back to the economy, while an unemployed worker will buy much less, and pay no taxes. The Human Employment Tax Credit unlike the Investment Credit spends money on human, not just machine, productivity. The government’s Technology Assessment Office has said that a company is deemed to be investing if it purchases a new machine, but not if it pays for the employee training needed to use that machine efficiently. The results to this policy are that we’ve seen service workers on the rise and technological jobs decreasing.
The Local Job Creation Tax Credit would grant companies tax breaks in proportion to the number of permanent local workers and jobs they add to their payrolls. They could still purchase equipment. But their corporate tax bill wouldn’t be scaled down if they are unable to take on more permanent employees from their own area. So they would have an incentive to hire and train local workers.
The Local Job Creation Tax Credit would also give incentives to car manufacturers to base the price of car leases on use, and insurers and state drivers’ licensing to create fees on the basis of use. In turn that would encourage drivers to drive less, with a resulting reduction in fossil fuel use. The result would be less dependence on fossil fuels and road infrastructure and more time to look at innovative ways to move people around in an environmentally compatible fashion, as well as local job creation, increased rental and sale of local apartments and homes, use of local services and reduction of sprawl.
One way the job pattern we are in now can be measured, that employs less people and still claims to offer great service, is to look at the new retailers: giant home improvement centers—discount stores—who claim that the customer is always within easy reach of an employee who can help them find what they’re looking for. We all know this is a fallacy. If retail businesses like these received local job creation tax credits, they could hire more workers to not only sell, but to reinvigorate cottage industries that make local goods. The result would be less congestion and pollution, and a boost to businesses, which would enhance the local economy.
How the Local Job Creation Tax Credit would work-
In today's economic climate, workers hired through a tax credit incentive might not have found jobs otherwise. “The credit would take effect only when (local) workers are hired, qualifying otherwise unemployed workers as consumers and taxpayers, paying federal withholding tax at once, so the U.S. Treasury would take in new money months before the employer was granted a credit.”
According to Charles A. Cerami, author of numerous articles in The Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Swiss Review of World Affairs and the author of eleven books including "A Marshall Plan for the 1990s," the Human Employment Tax Credit, which is very much the same concept as the Local Job Creation Tax Credit, would cost the government nothing.