A committee in the Iowa House has endorsed creation of a new tax break to attract a company like Google to Iowa. There’s speculation in the Council Bluffs area that Google will locate a new facility there.
Representative Phil Wise, a Democrat from Keokuk, would say only that the Iowa Department of Economic Development is in talks with a "web portal" company. "This is not pie in the sky," Wise told reporters. "There are talks going on with a specific very large company."
According to Wise, Iowa is in competition with Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. "This could be at a minimum a $600 million investment with 100 jobs at $50,000 to $130,000 per job or as much as 10 times that number," according to Wise.
On Tuesday afternoon the House Ways and Means Committee approved a bill extending a sales and use tax exemption to web portal firms. The tax break would apply to a company’s computers and other equipment and the power to run them.