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NCR’s tax deal moves all jobs

Company says no employees will be allowed to work remotely from Dayton after it moves to suburban Atlanta.

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By Tom Beyerlein and Jessica Wehrman, Staff Writers Updated 3:02 AM Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Telecommuting is on the rise nationwide with the explosion in high-speed Internet connections and handheld computers. But if you’re an NCR Corp. headquarters employee, don’t expect to get a chance to work in Dayton when your job moves to Georgia by the end of next year.

Asked if any of the 1,250 employees affected by the move will be allowed to work virtually from Ohio, NCR spokesman Jeffrey Dudash said: “The answer is no.”

Part of the reason for that, Dudash said, is Georgia’s “Mega Job Tax Credit” law, which essentially will allow NCR to keep Georgia payroll taxes deducted from employees’ paychecks for five years. That’s a disincentive to allow people to continue to work locally, where they would be subject to Ohio tax.

“The point of the law is you would get Georgia tax credits for jobs created in Georgia,” said Bert Brantley, a spokesman for Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue.

“Certainly the tax incentive is part of that (decision),” Dudash said Tuesday, June 16. “The other factor is our interest in consolidating our operations in Georgia as much as possible.”

Under the new Georgia law, a company qualifies for a five-year tax credit of $5,250 per employee as long as it brings more than 1,800 jobs to Georgia, has at least a $150 million payroll and invests more than $450 million in land and facilities. NCR qualifies for the break because of additional jobs being consolidated from other operations.

Brantley called it a matter of “semantics” that NCR is keeping money from employee payroll taxes. “They’re using tax credits to offset their corporate income tax liability,” he said.

Telecommuters would be subject to an Ohio tax, said John Kohlstrand, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Taxation. “There’s no question that if you worked in Dayton and telecommuted, it would be our position that there would be (Ohio) tax liability,” he said.

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