My own experience, though, as a business executive and as a governor, tells me that businesses are interested in a lot more than a low tax rate when they decide where to locate.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When companies are trying to find a state to locate a new business or factory, they look at a number of factors - including tax structure, employment base, infrastructure, education system, etc.
If you are doing well, your business will pay more in tax; if you're not doing well, you pay less.
Small businesses are the backbone of job creation in South Carolina, but we're not maximizing our potential when we've got what's effectively the highest income tax rate in the Southeast holding us back.
Washington has got to, across the board, lower taxes for small businesses so that our mom and pops can reinvest and hire people, so that our businesses can thrive.
Something like 80 per cent of business decisions have a location element. In fact, it's probably higher than that.
I think we're pretty much where we need to be on corporate taxes.
I've built companies, I've created jobs, I know the frustration of small businesses with higher taxes.
If businesses don't know from state to state what the requirements are for taxes, they have to waste a lot of money on accountants and lawyers before deciding to expand their business into the state next door.
I can't imagine an argument that says that raising marginal tax rates on high income people, many of whom are business owners, is a recipe for economic growth.
Obama wants to take the individual small business tax to 44 percent, and the corporate rate - he says - down to 28 percent or whatever. But that really damages the small businesses. And it doesn't make us competitive. You got to take them both down to 20, because state and local corporate taxes are 5 percent.