Tennessee should create an economic environment that allows workers, entrepreneurs, and businesses to thrive.
In 2022, the Beacon Center has traveled the state to listen to our fellow Tennesseans about the challenges they face. From our listening tour, we identified economic opportunity as one of the four top policy issues facing Tennesseans.
As part of this listening tour, for the past year, Beacon has partnered with 12 entrepreneurs to study the barriers to entrepreneurship and innovation in our state. Their work has culminated in a series of reforms designed to make Tennessee the friendliest place to start and grow a business and become a magnet for jobs and opportunity. To that end, our Entrepreneurship & Innovation Council has proposed 13 different reforms, including the following:
- Help Tennesseans burdened by record inflation by eliminating the local business tax that harms small businesses and is difficult to comply with yet brings in a tiny fraction of overall government revenue, further streamlining the tangible personal property tax, and reforming the state’s corporate franchise and excise tax.
- Be welcoming to Tennesseans seeking to start a new business with a “Free to Be in Tennessee” program exempting their first business filing from the government fee and by creating a one-stop-shop for all business filings.
- Give legal and regulatory certainty to new technologies like blockchain and other innovations.
- Fight back against federal overreach that tramples Tennesseans’ economic freedoms.
You can read all of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Council’s recommendations here: beacontn.org/eandicouncil
