SmartStart Your Business Today! How to Start a Business in Massachusetts is your road map to avoiding operational, legal and financial pitfalls and breaking through the bureaucratic red tape that often entangles new entrepreneurs. This all-in-one resource goes a step beyond other business how-to books to give you a jump-start on planning for your business. It provides you with: Valuable state-specific sample forms and letters on CD-ROM Mailing addresses, telephone numbers and websites for the federal, state, local and private agencies that will help get your business up and running State population statistics, income and consumption rates, major industry trends and overall business incentives to give you a better picture of doing business in Massachusetts Checklists, sample forms and a complete sample business plan to assist you with numerous startup details State-specific information on issues like choosing a legal form, selecting a business name, obtaining licenses and permits, registering to pay taxes and knowing your employer responsibilities Federal and state options for financing your new venture Resources, cost information, statistics and regulations have all been updated. That, plus a new easier-to-use layout putting all the state-specific information in one block of chapters, make this your must-have guide to getting your business off the ground.

Traces the historical development of corporation taxes and to indicate their fiscal importance. Focuses on the state of Massachusetts due to its industrial character and extended history in the taxation of corporations.

For the past 20 years, corporations have been receiving huge tax breaks and subsidies in the name of "jobs, jobs, jobs." But, as Greg LeRoy demonstrates in this important new book, it's become a costly scam. Playing states and communities off against each other in a bidding war for jobs, corporations reduce their taxes to next-to-nothing and win subsidy packages that routinely exceed $100,000 per job. But the subsidies come with few strings attached. So companies feel free to provide fewer jobs, or none at all, or even outsource and lay people off. They are also free to pay poverty wages without health care or other benefits. All too often, communities lose twice. They lose jobs--or gain jobs so low-paying they do nothing to help the community--and lose revenue due to the huge corporate tax breaks. That means fewer resources for maintaining schools, public services, and infrastructure. In the end, the local governments that were hoping for economic revitalization are actually worse off. They're forced to raise taxes on struggling small businesses and working families, or reduce services, or both. Greg LeRoy uses up-to-the-minute examples, naming names--including Wal-Mart, Raytheon, Fidelity, Bank of America, Dell, and Boeing--to reveal how the process works. He shows how carefully corporations orchestrate the bidding wars between states and communities. He exposes shadowy "site location consultants" who play both sides against the middle, and he dissects government and corporate mumbo-jumbo with plain talk. The book concludes by offering common-sense reforms that will give taxpayers powerful new tools to deter future abuses and redirect taxpayer investments in ways that will really pay off.