Governor Scott stops in Sarasota to talk about jobs, manufacturing

As part of a three-day, three-city bus tour celebrating the addition of 1 million jobs to Florida’s employment rolls, Florida’s 45th governor stopped in the Sarasota-Manatee area to talk about objectives and this year’s state budget.

Scott chose JRL Ventures, Inc./Marine Concepts, a design, engineering and manufacturing company, as his venue because it expanded into Manatee County from a primary location in Cape Coral because of the kinds of tax incentives Scott is promoting.

He recently proposed, for the 2016-17 state budget, $1 billion in tax cuts for businesses, including eliminating business income tax on retailers and manufacturers in the state, as well as reducing taxes on commercial leases as part of an effort to increase jobs in the state.

Scott said he wants more funding for Enterprise Florida, a public-private partnership between businesses and Florida’s public leaders, and is also pushing to make permanent a tax exemption for manufacturing equipment purchases that is scheduled to sunset in April 2017.

“We need to make (the manufacturing-equipment exemption) permanent,” Scott said, “We’re the only state that has a sales tax on commercial leases … that impacts all of our businesses, we’ve got to get rid of that. We also have the money – we don’t need the revenues we’re getting from the business income tax … If we get rid of all those taxes over the next three, think of the job growth in this state.”