Iowa Business Resource

Anyone running an Iowa business could soon see their taxes cut from 12 percent (the nation’s highest) to a proposed flat rate of 6 percent. Commercial property taxes also will be reduced by 40 percent over the next five years. All of this is being done to spur economic development in the heart of America’s heartland.

Other initiatives that benefit an Iowa small business include no personal property tax and no sales-and-use tax on machinery and equipment purchases. The state also offers a refundable credit for increasing research activities — up to 6.5 percent of qualifying expenditures.

The Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress (IPEP) aims to improve every component of the state’s economic development portfolio: business attraction, retention, innovation, and expansion. To help create new, high wage jobs for Iowans, the state has targeted renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, information technology, financial services, biosciences and food manufacturing as desirable growth industries.

In addition, Iowa offers reduced or eliminated corporate tax and a 50 percent deductibility of federal taxes from Iowa corporate income. Iowa is one of only five states to offer this deductible.