No me digan que Obama quiere crear empleos. Por favor!!!
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Le suben los impuestos a los empleadores. Los impuestos del estado y federales estan subiendo en casi dos docenas de estados. Doble impuesto, otro costo mas que no promueve la creacion de empleo.
Benefits Tax Hits Businesses Twice
By SARA MURRAY
State and federal taxes are rising for employers across the U.S. as states struggle to repay federal loans for unemployment benefits, including more than $1 billion in interest due Friday.
State and federal taxes are going up for employers in nearly two dozen states struggling to pay back the federal government for loans to cover ballooning unemployment benefits. Sara Murray has details on The News Hub.
.The increases in state and federal unemployment-insurance taxes—paid primarily by businesses—are hitting as the recovery appears close to stalling, consumer confidence is low and unemployment remains high at 9.1%.
These tax increases come on top of measures intended to tame government budgets, including other state tax increases and spending reductions as well as federal cuts.
The higher tax tab could discourage hiring. "It's just one more cost to add," said Douglas Devnew, vice president for finance and administration at Trumpf Inc., a Farmington, Conn., manufacturer. "Companies like ours are going to think that much harder if we need more folks."
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Close.When joblessness soared during the recession and anemic recovery, many states drained their unemployment funds and borrowed from Washington to cover their share of benefits. Now 27 states collectively owe almost $38 billion. More than $1 billion in interest on those loans is due Friday, when the federal government's fiscal year ends, and some states are relying on additional taxes to make the payments.
Many employers will face a second hit—higher federal taxes—if their states don't pay their loan balances by November. The increased unemployment-insurance levies, an added $21 per employee a year in roughly 22 states, go into effect in January. That increase will be even bigger for states that miss their interest payments.
State governments are "under tremendous pressure to find a way to pay these interest charges," said Richard Hobbie, executive director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. "The penalties for not paying interest are severe." The federal government pays for administering the unemployment program and emergency jobless benefits extensions. States pay for up to 26 weeks of regular benefits and, if they exhaust their funds, borrow from Washington to continue providing checks.
Connecticut, for instance, has an outstanding loan balance of nearly $810 million and racked up an additional $22.6 million in interest, which it has paid, according to the Treasury Department. State unemployment-insurance taxes—and the size of the tax increases—vary. Employers in Connecticut pay between $285 and $1,020 per employee a year.
In August, Connecticut businesses paid an additional charge of roughly $25 per full-time employee. If the state doesn't pay off its loan balance by November, employers will pay the additional $21-per-employee federal tax by January.
."It's supposed to be you finance your system when times are pretty good," said Carl Guzzardi, the unemployment insurance director of accounts at the Connecticut Department of Labor. "We simply didn't gather sufficient funds so we had enough reserves." That's unlikely to change soon. "We're probably going to be going through this exercise for each of the next three years," he said
The proceeds from the state tax increases will be used to pay the interest owed. The proceeds of the federal tax increases will be used to pay down the outstanding loan balances.
The federal loans to states for unemployment insurance were interest-free through 2010, thanks to a provision in President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus package. Mr. Obama's 2012 budget proposal included a provision that would allow states to borrow interest-free for another two years but it gained little traction in Congress.
Rising unemployment taxes could diminish the impact of other government measures designed to boost the economy. The Social Security payroll tax cut for workers, which reduced the employees' rate to 4.2% of earnings from 6.2%, did little to reduce the overall tax burden or boost disposable income this year in part because it was offset by state-level tax increases and the expiration of other federal tax credits, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis.
Although many economists support efforts to rein in budgets, some worry the combination of tax increases and spending cuts is hindering growth.
"The broader sweep of policy is something to be concerned about," said Bruce Kasman, a JP Morgan Chase & Co. economist. "That, I think, is a big issue from the perspective of an economy that is definitely struggling."
Some economists see little impact from unemployment-insurance tax increases alone. "At the margin, you might expect it to have a very small effect on hiring," said Jesse Rothstein, a University of California, Berkeley, economist and former chief economist for the Labor Department.
Amid high unemployment, states could borrow from the federal government for years, leading to repeated rounds of tax increases to pay back the loans with interest.
Rhode Island's unemployment insurance trust fund likely won't be solvent until 2015. In the meantime, employers are facing higher taxes and jobless workers will receive less-generous benefits. "We expect that to help with solvency," said Laura Hart, a spokeswoman for the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. "It's a shared pain."
A National Association of State Workforce Agencies survey this year found that, of 26 states that responded and had outstanding balances on unemployment-insurance loans, 16 planned to rely on tax increases to pay the interest on their loans.
States have other options for raising the money. California is borrowing from its disability insurance fund to pay its interest tab of more than $300 million.
"At this point we don't anticipate that the fund can recover on its own," without legislative changes to the system, said Loree Levy, a spokeswoman for California's Employment Development Department. "It will be an even bigger interest payment next year if we continue where we are today."
Idaho issued bonds to pay the nearly $230 million it owed Washington in principal and interest because it got a better interest rate. The interest rate on the bonds was just above 1% compared with the more than 4% rate the federal government charges. The switch will save $15.5 million, according to the Idaho Department of Labor. Other states have considered tapping general funds.
Write to Sara Murray at
sara.murray@wsj.com