In a move designed to support entrepreneurs, Atlanta leaders amended the occupation tax ordinance to give an exemption to select new and emerging technology businesses.
The amendment, which garnered a lot of support from Invest Atlanta and leaders in the technology community, exempts businesses classified as high technology, life sciences, and intellectual property from paying Atlanta’s occupation tax license fee.
“Entrepreneurs coming to Atlanta have told us that the best thing we can do to support them is to make it easy for them to conduct business in the city,” Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said in a statement. “Fostering this type of environment now will pay dividends for us well into the future as we continue to position Atlanta as a destination for technology and innovation.”
The revision to the occupation tax ordinance makes Atlanta competitive with other cities that have enacted similar incentives, including New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and Austin, Texas.
The Technology Association of Georgia said the Peach State’s tech sector led the Georgia’s employment recovery, and created nearly 16,000 jobs over the past two years — more than any other sector — to reach 263,000 workers. Technology jobs represented more than 20 percent of all new jobs created the same two-year period. In 2012, the technology sector saw increasing numbers of workers and higher wages which pumped $2 billion of new payroll spending into Georgia’s economy.
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