(123rf.com image)

Reducing business taxes, lawsuit reform and addressing South Carolina’s energy needs top the 2025 Competitiveness Agenda of the S.C. Chamber of Commerce as the legislative session gets underway.

Seven areas, enumerated in the Competitiveness Agenda, that the chamber would like legislators to focus on this year are:

·        “Reducing Business Tax Burdens & Modernizing the Tax Code

·        Bringing Fairness to an Unfair Tort System

·        Addressing South Carolina’s Future Energy Needs

·        Addressing Barriers to Workforce Participation

·        Ensuring Continued Economic Growth & Prosperity

·        Establishing a Flourishing & Resilient Talent Pipeline

·        Letting Businesses Do Business”

“South Carolina continues to be on the receiving end of unprecedented economic and population growth, thanks in no small part to the efforts of our state’s leaders who have worked closely with the business community in recent years to enact pro-growth policies including significant tax relief, transformative investments in all facets of the state’s critical infrastructure, and initiatives to transform the state’s workforce of the future,” said South Carolina Chamber President and CEO Mike Brenan in releasing  the 2025 agenda.

“However, we cannot rest on our laurels if we want South Carolina’s economy to be the envy of every other state in the country. As we enter the 2025 session of the South Carolina General Assembly, the SC Chamber has again defined and will advocate for a pro-business agenda that, if enacted, will make South Carolina’s economy even stronger and unleash our state’s full economic potential.”

The annual competitiveness agenda is developed through a grassroots outreach effort with business leaders across South Carolina. The SC Chamber team engaged with nearly 800 local business leaders from more than 30 local chambers during a statewide 22-stop Grassroots Tour. The agenda was then approved by the chamber’s board. Details of the agenda are available on the chamber’s website at www.scchamber.net.

The Competitiveness Agenda is unveiled as part of the chamber’s annual Business Speaks event attended by state business leaders and legislators. This year the event, a dinner at the Pastides Alumni Center at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, was held Jan. 15, just two days after the opening of the legislature and was attended by an overflow crowd of nearly 300 business people, state officials and legislators.

Addressing the state’s energy needs was clearly top of mind for many at the event, whose presenting sponsors were Duke Energy and Dominion Energy.

Tim Pearson, South Carolina state president for Duke Energy, noted in his remarks that the current Duke Energy system that serves North and South Carolina took 121 years to build, but what Duke is seeing now, because of residential and industrial growth and economic development success, “is that over the next 15 years, we have to double the size of that system.”

In order to meet the growth that's coming, Duke projects it will need to build in 15 years what it built in 120. 

“That is a huge challenge, but it's also a huge opportunity,” Pearson said. “Because if you look at the Duke system in South Carolina, the decisions that have been made over those 120 years by Duke leadership, but more importantly by the political leadership and the business community have set us up for the success we see today.”

State legislative leaders speaking at the event included Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, the House minority leader; Sen. Ronnie Saab, D-Greeleyville, associate Senate minority leader; David Hiott, R- Pickens, House majority leader; Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, Senate majority leader; Rep.  Murrell Smith, R.-Sumter, House speaker; and. Sen. Thomas Alexander, R-Walhalla, Senate president.

On taxes, the chamber’s agenda urges reducing business tax burdens and modernizing the tax code. Among other actions, the chamber would like to see the state’s individual income tax rate of 6.2 percent lowered to make South Carolina more competitive with our Southeast neighbors.

Agreeing with the chamber’s stance, Speaker Smith said South Carolina “has got to be more competitive in our income tax and other tax laws. This is a competitiveness issue, and it is not lost on me that South Carolina has the highest personal income tax rate in the Southeast.” The business personal property tax also needs to be addressed, he said. “That is probably one of the most insidious taxes on small businesses in the state.” 

Lawsuit or tort reform has been an issue for the state’s business community for years. The state’s current laws on “joint and several liability” have created a “lawsuit-friendly climate,” according to the chamber, “where plaintiffs are incentivized to target the ‘deepest-pocket’ for 100 percent of damages regardless of their actual percentage of fault.”  The chamber is urging reform “that determines a fair share of liability” so that businesses would only be liable for paying for their actual share of damages in a suit.

Sen. Massey told the Business Speaks audience that he was hopeful that the Senate would take up tort reform in early February. “But to do it will require your help,” he said, urging the business leaders to contact their legislators directly.

On addressing the state’s energy needs, the chamber is asking the legislature to consider “an all-of-the-above” strategy to increase the state’s generation capacity to make sure all businesses and consumers have “available, affordable, and reliable power.” That would include passing permitting reform “to ensure critical energy infrastructure projects are not delayed.”

But Sen. Saab cautioned against moving too quickly on reform measures. “The impact of it will serve generations and generations to come. And so that is why we must be mindful and deliberate.”

As part of an effort to “Address Barriers to Workforce Participation,” the chamber is urging the General Assembly to look at the “affordability, availability and quality of childcare,” often viewed as a major obstacle to job seekers with small children. The chamber would like the state to incentivize employers to offer childcare benefits, reduce regulatory burdens for providers and strengthen the childcare workforce.

The chamber is also urging the Legislature to “index the duration of unemployment benefits to the unemployment rate.” An effort the business leaders believe would help ensure that workers don’t “stay on the sidelines and collect unemployment benefits when high-paying jobs are going unfilled.”  According to the chamber, “during times of low unemployment, individuals in South Carolina can collect unemployment benefits for a longer period of time than individuals in other Southeastern states.”

To “Ensure Continued Economic Growth and Prosperity,” the 2025 Competitiveness Agenda says the state needs to continue to make significant investment in the state’s critical infrastructure, modernize the electric vehicle registration “to ensure all individuals who use our roads and bridges are paying their fair share of maintenance costs,” continue to support tax incentives and economic development efforts to attract new investment and jobs, and “support policies that make South Carolina a more welcoming state for business growth and talent attraction, and oppose policies that threaten South Carolina’s reputation as a business-friendly state.

To help “Establish a Flourishing and Resilient Talent Pipeline,” the state chamber is urging the General Assembly to, among other things, “support initiatives to improve educational achievement so that by 2023 at least 75 percent of students are at or above grade level.” The chamber would also like to see continued support to fund technical college scholarships for high-demand jobs, for increased teacher pay raises to aide recruitment and retention efforts, as well as efforts to ensure that students “are learning the foundational skills in demand by Palmetto State employers.”

The last point of the Competitiveness Agenda, “Let Businesses Do Business,” focuses on opposition to unionization and regulation, especially from the federal level, and allowing companies “to operate their facilities in a manner that supports economic growth, while also balancing environmental protection required by state laws and regulation.”