Gov. Walkers corp. tax breaks won’t help Wisconsin as much as funding education

That’s what Wisconsin Budget Project’s Jon Peacock told a legislative panel.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s mixed bag of tax reduction proposals have received mixed reviews.

From the Wisconsin Budget Project, Jon Peacock tells a legislative panel in Madison that there are areas to agree and disagree with the governor.

Peacock does believe not getting rid of the some corporate tax credits is a mistake, however. He says corporate tax breaks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be when it comes to expanding business.

“Things like corporate taxes have an effect on location decisions,” Peacock said, “but when you ask those same corporate executive, and when you look at their behavior, what you see, there’s a whole lot of other things that have more of an effect.”

Simply put, cutting corporate taxes doesn’t mean creating jobs.

Peacock said businesses look at far more than just tax policy when considering growth and expansion. They look at training and schools.

“We really need, for a long-time prosperity, to get back to the roots of what has made Wisconsin economically successful, and, in our opinion, that’s the quality of the K-12 and higher education systems,” he said.

So, using the corporate tax break money to fund education would be the better route in the state.

“So, there’s the tradeoff,” Peacock said. “When you don’t have adequate revenue, you can come up with a lot of tax credits that, maybe do a little bit on the margins but there’s a tradeoff of not having a revenue to be as much as we would like to do.”

Walker has proposed increasing spending for K-12 schools in the state by around $650 million over the next couple of years.  At the same time, pushing for about $600 in tax cuts over the same period.