Tire producer in Scottsville shutting down
The shutdown of Scottsville’s longtime tire plant will leave 106 residents without a job, according to the town mayor.
Mayor John Snoddy IV released a statement Tuesday on behalf of the town, saying: “It is extremely unfortunate that Hyosung has chosen this time of year to so negatively impact its 106 Scottsville employees; the town’s deepest sympathies go out to those individuals and their families.”
The Hyosung plant will close in January, according to Snoddy.
Plant manager Roger Hutchins did not immediately return phone calls Tuesday evening.
The shutdown of such a major employer is bound to hurt the area, said Timothy Hulbert, president and chief executive officer of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s a significant employer in Scottsville and a significant employer in the region,” Hulbert said of the decades-old tire plant.
With the holidays around the corner, the shutdown is “a heartbreaker,” said Michael Harvey, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development.
“For the people who have worked there for years, its a real blow,” Harvey said. “With the economy the way it is, the workers are going to have a harder time being absorbed into the workforce.”
Harvey said the partnership would offer training for those who lose their jobs and help them get new jobs. He added that TJPED would also be willing to market the building to other companies.
The Scottsville facility was built in 1944 by the Defense Plant Corporation to help with the war effort, according to the Scottsville Museum. Uniroyal bought the plant in 1945, and Hyosung took over in 2002.
The peak employment period for the Uniroyal plant was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the museum’s Web site states.
At that time, the plant employed 340 workers and operated four shifts, five days a week, according to the museum.
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“28,000 business paid zero taxes”
Ok… how many of those businesses LOST money and that is the reason?
How many on those business owners took all of the profits in salary (which they paid taxes on) to avoid the double taxation?
LLCs were formed just for these reasons.
How many of the businesses that lost money for the owners still paid taxes by collecting sales tax, paying real estate tax (even of they lease it is still a pass through)paid inventory tax, state unemployment, fed unemployment social security, medicare, property tax and sales tax on every purchase not for resale.
The government misspends the money and we as taxpayers put too much trust in them to not waste it. They just put new lights on afton mountain.. a GREAT thing…. but they spent TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS A LIGHT to do it. This sounds crazy to me and the press never seems to look at the why it cost so much. Maybe its legit, maybe its not. This is an article I would like to read.
I cannot read between the lines. I was merely pointing out that some 40% of eligible taxpayers in the US pay zero Federal Income Tax. Since I pay substantially more than zero, I believe my statement to be accurate.
The GAO reports that 28,000 Corporations paid zero Federal Income Tax as well. So it seems to me that, perhaps, there is more than one or two special cases out there that might be fixed.
The Combined tax burden on business estimated by the Heritage Foundation, that bastion of liberalism, pegs the long term tax burden as about 2.5% of GDP. I’ll leave it to others to discern weather that is onerous, or even relevent.
As I stated, I am somewhat nuetral in re business taxes—they are a means unto an end—and you are quite correct that the real focus of attention ought to be on the end—how much government is neccessary for the public good, how the money levied by txes is spent.
Ruinous wars, for example, are the ultimate waste of precious treasure—human lives, destruction of infrastructure, an insult to the environment—a failing of reprehsible proportions of our so-called representative form of government, in the name of defending so-called liberty. In 200 plus years we have substituted the tyranny of a king with the tyranny of the Corporation.
Because, the truth is, we have no business in much of these affairs, except of Big Business, and if EXXON pays as it does, it is because they exact more in return.
As for the business folks in Scottsville, many are my friends, and we disagree a great deal, so no surprise that they are so reactionary. Apparently when mom and pop handed them their wealth, they forgot from whence it came—not ny their hands, I assure you.
If this is such a bad place to do business for the hypothetical hardware store, perhaps Metamoros, Mexico is better?
Would you like a similar accounting of a real medical practice? How about a real Financial Services partnership? For that matter, how about a real homeowning couple with two incomes, three kids, and a dog? A single mom with one kid, jobless in this economy, separated from her husband who used her as his punching bag? A temporay homeless guy putting together his resume, learning a new trade, and looking to start a buiness—where does he go for help?
So who, exactly, am I supposed to shed tears for? I say, we all suck it up. And, yeah, maybe the business community is not doing its share (as a whole).
Exxon paid more in taxes in 2008 then the bottom half of all taxpayers COMBINED. If you paid the same as the bottom 40% COMBINED then you are one rich dog.
Example: A Hardware store grosses three million in sales. They paid 1.5 million for inventory costs leaving them with a real gross income of 1.5 million.
They pay out: (estimated for example)
12,000 a year in real estate tax
3000 a year in property tax
10,000 a year in inventory tax (1%) of a million)
150k a year collected in sales tax.
(assuming a million dollar payroll):
158,000 a year in Social Security/medicare withholdings
50k a year in state witholding (5%)
200K a year in federal witholding (20%)
and lets say that out of the 500k left over, the Corportaion nets 90K profit so he has to pay corporate taxes of 25% which is 36K. And THEN if he distributes that to the stockholders the have to pay 15% federal and 5% state capital gains tax or another 7200 dollars…
So add it up..
12,000
3,000
10,000
150,000
158,000
50,000
200,000
36,000
7,200
_______
626,200.00 Total money the Government received from the Hardware store for the year.
My math says they got 41% of the money.
THe owners of the corportation got 46,800 dollars or 3% of the gross profits (or 1.5% of the gross sales)
Of coursr my example left out all of the incendental taxes like utility taxes, business license fees, sales taxes paid on store supplies , unemployemet insurace (federal and state) etc.
I do not believe that there is a “conspiracy” of any kind going on. I just believe that there has been an incredible amount of politicing going on by everybody in government to deflect how wasteful they are with OUR money. There is no doubt that government waste has contributed to the massive debt burden our children will face and the press of late has been to blame business.
Just imagine how many Stress heart attacks could heve been prevented if Congress spent as much time on waste as they have on the Health Care debate.
I find it ironic that there are people who cannot make their mortgage payments because they got caught in the meltdown (even though they are still working) but uncle sam still wants his money at gunpoint.
In this mess citizens have tighened their belts, Businesses have tightened their belts and theGovernment is trying to find new sources of revenue so they don’t have to tighten their belt.
Antiboyd, if you think taxes are not a factor in business decisions then that has been your experience. I suppose all of the articles in Business Week about busineses moving from southern California to Nevada were just made up because Ann Landers retired and they needed to fill the space.
Also, if talk to business owners in Scottsville you will see that the consens is that the Government is anti businesss for the most part.
My apologies for incorrectly associating Badger Powhatan with Tyco. They were acquired by Figgie International.
So, was it taxes, then, or labor?
I’ll tell you this much, IMHO, its neither. You can make all the excuses for incompetent management and the inability to meet rather than bow to challenges.
In the late ‘80’s, I was hired freelance to justify the closure of a printing facility in Virginia. After considerable time spent on the manufacturing floor, performing what would be called an operational audit, I was able to demonstrate to both local management and to the parent company overseas that the facility could, and should, be profitable. This had zero to do with tax burdens, zero to do with market prices for printed material, and everything to do with unleashing the creativity and productivity of people on the floor, and their supervisors. Fortuntaely, unions, and union rules, were not involved. Long and short, a plant was kept open, expanded, and twenty years later contributes to the local and state economy.
Of course, a sister facility in Orange County closed its doors, though it was profitable, as the parent saw the needs to rationalize and consolidate resources. Good news, bad news… thriving business in one location, empty, hulking plant in another—in the same state. Tell me what taxes has to do with that. Or labor. Zip.
Phillip Crosby, in the ‘80’s, estimated that, conservatively, 40% of operations are waste. He was speaking of for-profit business enterprise, specifically manufacturing and service operations, not governemnt-owned, operated, or subsidized operations—likely much higher.
There is a sequal to the above example. A year later, I worked on a project that looked at setting up a children’s book printing and binding operation (into the same plant). At that time, that work had migrated to the Pacific rim. Publishers chased the lower manufacturing costs, from pre-press on through. So, what do you do, say it can’t be done? Or put together a dedicated team of employees, draw up a plan, get funds for a prototype operation, by equipment on the cheap from shuttered operations, and go into full-scale production a year later?
Admittedly, that takes the right kind of presence of the right kind of people in the right places in a company with the resources to compete.
Relocation to Mexico, IMHO, is a fool’s game. It’s for the weak-minded and slackers who pretend to be managers. It’s for pinheads in suits that don’t give a gosh-darn about people.
That’s not all business people, by a long shot. But there’s too few that make a difference.
Me, I could blame my business woes (and I have my share in this market) on the copious taxes I pay, or a bad economy, or lousy customers, or a hundred other excuses. But it just aint so.
“When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The fellow whose verdict counts most in you life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
You may be like Jack Horner and chisel a plum
And think you’re a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.
He’s the fellow to please-never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear to the end.
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.“
Antiboyd-
For the record Badger-Powhattan shut down their U.S. facilities (both the one in Cville and another one in North or South Carolina- I forget which) so they could relocate to Matamoros Mexico at the Brownsville Texas border.
The workers in at the plant in Mexico are being paid two dollars ($2) an hour and receive no benefits.
Well, saltmongrel, here is your challenge: provide reliable sources for your assertions… a third of every dollar? That’s pure hogwash, and you couldn’t back that up if you tried (at least not honestly)...
And, I’ll do the same. If I cannot, I’ll correct that statement and apologize… I’m not perfect… and I’ve been caught once or twice before…
But the notion that there is some sort of left wing conspiracy brainwashing the public via the media… that’s beyond Glenn beck, even. Go buy some Palin-Beck 2012 buttons, file ‘em away for posterity, maybe your great-great grandkids can sell them on E-Bay someday as memorabilia that their generation can laugh at.
Seriously, the assertion was that taxes caused that plant in Scottsville to fold. I say that’s false.
And, by the way, I pay more taxes than the bottom 40%, so your point is? what?
You can thank Peewee Smiley Governer Kaine for this. He never did anything for Virginia since he took office, except lose jobs take away money and other things. Unreal
antiboyd said:For the record, major corporations are laughably undertaxed and
I say that the media distorts this out of control and makes Joe Citizen think he or she should just “tax” businesses because they are “laughingly undertaxed” when in my opinion most are not.
Obviously there are glaring exceptions that need to be addressed. My points however are valid. The government ends up with nearly a third of every dollar that comes in even if the company is breaking even. This is because they get proerty tax, real estate tax, sales tax and witholding REGARDLESS of whether the company turns a profit or not. And if the company manages to turn a profit then they get a cut of that too.
People hate Exxon but Exxon paid more in taxes last year then the bottom half of all taxpayers combined.
I don’t object to taxes. I object to the brainwashing that goes on that causes the taxpayers to scrutinize where it comes from instead of where it goes. The government is out of control with spending and they have successfully diverted the attention to the rich and big business. That is the point I was “itching” to make.
Thanks Stan for pointing out the obvious. I don’t know if its salty’s confusion, or just his itching to make a point, but I think that I was pretty clear to what case I was addressing my comments… which, as you point out, is the case in hand.
I don’t recall saying that taxes on business are too low, or too high, aside from the quoted reference to multi-nationals (some of which we dubiously think of as domestic companies).
We do have several cases of domestic controlled companies closing their manufacturimg doors… Badger-Powhattan (Tyco), Con-Agra, Acme Visible Records, Comdial… all come to mind. I do not believe that in any of these cases that taxes had anything to do with their plant closures. Inefficient operations and/or dated product, and in the case of Tyco, strategic management of its portfolio of businesses segments, are a factor.
Anyway, doggie goes far off the deep end… if he has business interests, my advice is get a CPA, and if he’s a CPA, get some personal liability insurance, ‘cuz his limited knowledge of business accounting, let alone business principles, is fogged by his pro-business ideology.
That said, being a small business person who pays each of the taxes he has identified in his screed, I am empathetic with small businesses owners and entrepreneurs. When my entity of two had to file a Recycling Plan with the County, I said whoa, this is crazy. And, for kicks, try sorting out what licenses to have, what taxes to file (let alone pay), where and how to clear zoning… its nuts. I pay taxes on my office property… filing is more of anuisance than its worth. Ditto unemployment insurance, should I ever venture again into hiring someone non-exempt. Filing taxes, another whee! So, I feel his pain. But what is small, and what is medium, and what is large?
A book printing plant in Orange with $90 million in gross sales and 240 employess—small, medium, or large? Sounds kinda medium to some, maybe large to others… wouldn’t make a blip on the NASDAQ.
A retail shop with husband and wife as partners, two additional full-time employees, and two part-time? Definately that is small.
What about Crutchfield? Started in a garage when Bill was at Darden, small to medium to?
Most of what this points to is that we do all business people, and employees, and communities in which they are located, by making sweeping statements about business, ‘samll business’ in particular.
As for adding in the RE state taxes paid by one’s employess as some sort of ‘real tax rate’... well, that’s pretty odd… what about those taxes paid by your suppliers, while you’re at it, and the taxes paid by your customers/clients? (I hope everybody realizes that is a pejorative question, and not anything I’d propose or advocate.)
Under the current system of taxation, are business taxes fair, unfair, too high, too low? I guess that depends largely on your politics in most cases. Me, as a pragmatist, they are one way to fund public needs, and if taxes are too onerous, as to stifle the overall well-being of the general public, then taxing authority is being mis-applied… period. I am in favor of simple forms of taxation, rather than the rather inky octupus of federal, state, and local taxation all of us deal with every day to no apparent good purpose other than to employ lots of people in arguably non-value-added pursuits (hmmm… should we count them, too, I wonder?).
And, I am for watching how those tax dollars are spent, lest they be wasted on efforts like golden goose killing, warmongering, baby-killing, mother- and father-killing, bridges to nowhere, high-speed rail to Nevada, the study of tsee-tess flies and their mating habits, or whatever the heck else—oh yeah, energy credits, cash for clunkheads, subsidies to Big Oil (and for that matter medium and little oil as well), subsidies to corngrowers (and pig farmers, dairy farmers, belgian endive growers, etal.), postal service we don’t need or want, auto companies (or banks, or insurance cos, or any business entity) bankrupted by 1) UNIONS (aka organized crime) 2) dufusses 3) scurrilous or nefarious people 4) terrorists (kinda like 3, but just had to get that in), and especially anything that looks, acts, or smells like pork (aka ‘earmarks’, also see ‘bribes’).
EOR
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