The American Jobs Tax Credit

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Saturday January 09, 2010 · 9:44 PM PST

2010/01/09 · 21:44

Chad McGowan, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate - running against Jim DeMint, has a idea on how to get South Carolina - and the United States - moving again.

For more information, visit his site.

BTW, he needs money. Help him out.

In October, the national unemployment rate topped 9.8%. South Carolina’s 11.6% rate was even worse. We’ve got to do something to put South Carolinians back to work. Now.

Small businesses create jobs, and lots of them. I know because I run a small business myself.

If we’re going to put people back to work, we should make it easier and cheaper for small business owners across South Carolina and across the country to hire new employees.

So let’s pass a new American Jobs Tax Credit – a refundable tax credit for all employers who expand the portion of their payrolls subject to Social Security tax in 2010 and 2011.

Here’s how it would work:

• The refund would be equal to 15% of the new wage costs subject to Social Security tax in 2010 and 10% in 2011.

• It wouldn’t take much to implement. Policymakers have suggested adding a few lines to Form 941, the employer’s quarterly tax return, to calculate the refund.

• The program’s broad applicability would ensure that it’s available to businesses that add new jobs, add hours for existing workers, or simply boost pay. And tying the refund to Social Security tax-eligible payrolls would ensure that firms focus their efforts on hiring middle-income workers.

• According to the Economic Policy Institute, such a program – if enacted today and applied across the economy – could create 5.1 million new jobs and boost GDP by $314 billion over the next two years. The net cost of the program would be roughly $27 billion, or $5,400 for each new full-time job created.

Just think: if we devoted the $45 billion we spent to bail out just one big bank to a program like this, we could create more than 8.3 million new jobs across the country!

Poll
22 votes Show Results
U.S. Senate - South Carolina

Jim DeMint - R

Chad McGowan - D

22 votes Vote Now!
U.S. Senate - South Carolina

Jim DeMint - R

5 votes

Chad McGowan - D

17 votes

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