Yesterday, the Charlotte Observer published an op-ed written by Eric Henry, president of TS Designs. Now, mind you this is no ordinary article. Most small business owners I know, despise the Obama administration’s ‘You didn’t build that’ meme. So, it’s surprising to see an entrepreneur with an Occupier attitude. And as usual not all things are what they seem with this newspaper. And neither is TS Designs. Just go to their website. You’d think this company is more of a commune than a business. But first, I’ll let Mr. Henry tell his story.
From Eric Henry, president of TS Designs, a t-shirt manufacturing and printing company in Burlington:
If anyone tells you that ending the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent would hurt job creation, tell them to talk with me. We founded our business, TS Designs, in 1977 as a small manual screen printing company and grew to land contracts with some of clothing’s biggest brands. In 1993, we lost much of our business as a result of the supposedly job-creating NAFTA trade agreement as large brands sought out the cheapest labor costs they could in Mexico.
We decided to stick it out and keep good jobs right here in North Carolina. We invested in new technologies that reduced our energy and waste costs. We found new markets for our t-shirts. And we looked at our location in North Carolina as a virtue, not a problem. We decided to manufacture t-shirts from cotton grown, ginned, spun, knit, finished, cut, sewn, printed and dyed all within our state’s borders; or as we like to say, from dirt to shirt in North Carolina.
Years ago, I studied to be an economist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Our public schools, colleges and universities are among the important places we can see our tax dollars at work.
The new markets that TS Designs found are the environmentalist. The green energy fanatics are willing to pay higher prices for an eco-friendly product, whereas others would eschew paying 30% more for a stinking t-shirt. And isn’t it interesting that Mr. Henry is committed to education? His company is in need of indoctrinated students. Business Journal reported the following boondoggle on September 2010:
The work force will soon be a bit greener in Alamance County, thanks to a grant that is allowing Alamance Community College to place 40 interns at businesses and organizations across the community this fall.
The Energy Internship Program is funded by a grant awarded in July from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds. Alamance Community College was the only community college in the state to get money, and it got the largest grant — $339,276 — of the $5.6 million distributed to other entities in the state.
And guess which company is right in the middle of it all:
Alamance Community College has also been ahead of the curve in terms of green technology. Last fall, it launched its 12-credit-hour Green Technology Certificate Program, which is part of its industrial systems technology department. Participating students learn about wind, solar and hydro power systems, renewable energy and environmental sustainability issues.
Students who want to be eligible for one of the internships must be six hours into the Green Technology Certificate Program, Rhode says.
“We were looking at doing (the Green Technology Certificate Program) before the North Carolina community college system developed a curriculum for it,” says Nadelman, who credits Alamance Community College vice president Barry Weinberg for starting the program there. “We also had some forward-thinking people in the community who were working with solar energy and wanted us to do this.”
One of those companies, TS Designs, a small screen-printing business in Burlington, now serves as a remote classroom for students, who can observe how solar energy is implemented into a working business model.They have solar panels all right. And it couldn’t have happened without federal and state tax credits. Here is an excerpt from their website:
Our numbers estimate that our new solar array will pay for 96% of its purchase, installation, and operating costs over a 6 year period. This document answers a few FAQ’s about the numbers behind the payback.
The rest of this page references a spreadsheet with all the summary calculations shown. You can view that spreadsheet here as a PDF (opens in a new window).
Alternatively, you can find a PDF containing both the spreadsheet and all of the analysis content on this page for easy printing here.
How is the federal solar tax credit calculated?
The federal solar tax credit is calculated as 30% of the array purchase price; our federal tax credit is ($71,000 * 30%) = $21,300.
TS Designs is an S-Corporation, which means its income, and thus its tax burden, is transferred to its owners (Tom Sineath and Eric Henry). Because the federal tax credit will be claimed by Tom and Eric, the AMT (alternative minimum tax, a tax affecting individual income) will affect how much can be claimed in any given year (which is why the credit is spread over several years in varying estimated amounts on our attached payback analysis spreadsheet).
How is the NC state solar tax credit calculated?
The state solar tax credit is calculated as 35% of the array purchase price, divided evenly among the first 5 years. Our NC tax credit is ($71,000 * 35%) = $24,850, so we can take a $4,970 credit each year for five years.
Isn’t that a little hypocritical? Not if you’re a liberal. Mr. Henry continues on:
When the first Bush tax cuts passed in 2001 our nation had a budget surplus and we were told the tax cuts would pay for themselves by boosting economic growth and job creation. Many people thought that was bunk. You’d think the economic meltdown and large budget deficit would have shown that giving tax breaks for the best-off Americans makes them richer – it doesn’t pay for itself, it doesn’t trickle down and it doesn’t create jobs, at least not in America.
I know firsthand that investment is the key to keeping my business healthy. I know that the taxes I pay allow the government to reinvest in teachers, roads, clean water and other infrastructure and services that my business depends on to succeed.
North Carolina benefits significantly from government investment. For every tax dollar we send to Washington, we get $1.08 back in everything from supports for our cotton farmers, jobs at our military bases, investments in our national parks that bring tourists to our state, and research and education investments that support the Research Triangle.
What a bunch of nonsense. The only ones who get $1.08 back on their one dollar investment are the teat squawkers and political grifters who game the system. From 1995 to 2011, North Carolina cotton farmers received $1,632,729,642 in federal government subsidies. Now, that’s a hell of return on an investment! Lord only knows how much taxpayer money the Research Triangle scammed us out of. Oh, forgot. That’s an investment according to Mr. Henry of TS Designs.
And this particular Gem from the president of TS Designs is particularly amusing:
As a small business owner, taking money from the budgets of families struggling to make ends meet and giving it to the most prosperous families won’t help my business or our economy. Instead it will continue us down the path of subsidizing the already well off instead of making the investments in our economy and our people that truly strengthen our nation and our homegrown jobs.
