(Radio Iowa) – The State of Iowa for decades has been offering a variety of grants and tax breaks to reward out-of-state companies that expand in Iowa, but Republican Zach Lahn — who’s running for governor — says Iowa’s economic development programs should be reserved for Iowans.
“I think it’s far better to invest in companies that are grown here, that will have a faithful presence here and will be dedicated to our communities,” Lahn said, “and I really don’t believe these publicly traded companies and large companies from other states have that best interest in mind.” Lahn would no longer allow the state’s research and development tax credits to be awarded to an out-of-state company.
Lahn would even consider new tax credits for Iowa farmers who change the way they apply nitrogen fertilizer. “There’s no farmer that I know that wants to spend more money on inputs and when you talk about losing up to 30% of your input to wash out, if we had — and we do have — better ways to do this that we could incentivize, by applying it deeper into the soil.” Lahn says data centers should not get property tax exemptions. He proposes a property tax rate for data centers that’s five times the rate for industrial property.
“These are hundred billion dollar multi-national companies. They do not need a handout from the people of Iowa,” Lahn said. Lahn, from the moment he launched his campaign in early November, has been suggesting Iowa could set up different levels of taxation on property, so out-of-state owners would pay a higher rate. “Ron DeSantis has talked about it in Florida. The governor of Montana has actually done it. They’ve raised property taxes on second homes by 70 percent and reduced property taxes for primary residences by 30 percent,” Lahn said.
“We have ways we can do this. The first way I’d look at is a new category of property — investment farmland that gives exemptions to families that are actually farming it directly, but also targets those out of state funds and investors that are here to extract wealth from our state.” Lahn made his comments during taping of the “Iowa Press” which will be broadcast tonight (Friday) on Iowa P-B-S.
Last year, Iowa G-O-P chairman Jeff Kaufmann criticized Rob Sand, the lone Democrat running for governor, when he suggested something similar, Kaufmann says it’s unconstitutional for states to discriminate against other citizens in commerce, property or taxation.
