Free Republic

Melton International Tackle, which sells fishing gear worldwide, is marking 20 years in business in Anaheim during 2013. It may be the last. Owner Tracy Melton is consulting with his financial experts and exploring other locations for his 30-employee company. He says recent state tax hikes may be the final straw that drives him out of what he considers to be a state unfriendly to businesses. "I am not rich by any means," Melton said "I work hard, keep 30 people off unemployment, and my reward is that the state and feds want to take more than half of any...

Ansafone Contact Centers LLC in Santa Ana will open an office with 300 full-time jobs in Ocala, Fla., starting in October. Owner Randy Harmat made clear in a phone interview that he's not moving his company, which provides telephone customer service for other companies, and is not leaving California.

California has the sixth highest energy costs among the states in 2012, according to a new report by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, a Washington D.C. advocacy group. "Energy Cost Index 2012: Ranking the States" looks at a combination of the price of regular gasoline at the pump and the cost of electricity.

California is one of three "least competitive" states for business based on taxes, according to chief financial officers surveyed by Alvarez & Marsal Taxand LLC, the world's largest independent tax group based in New York.

Today we awoke to the good news. California’s unemployment rate has plunged to (drum roll please) 10.9 percent! That’s as good as the unemployment rate in the euro zone, where people out of work also account for 10.9 percent of the working population, a new high for those folks. How bad is 10.9 percent? Well, the New York Times gives some perspective, saying the rate shows: “that the euro zone economy remains distressed.”

An Anaheim technology company and its top executive have won $1.56 million in an Internet defamation case that illustrates the potential seriousness of false information put online. Such cases may be a backlash to people who like to vent online., hitting such online commenters in the wallet if they can’t prove their rants.

Owners of small service businesses give California an F grade for business friendliness, according to an online survey by Thumbtack.com, a website for service companies. It is the second survey in a week that gives the Golden State black marks by business owners. Chief Executive magazine recently released its annual survey of Best and Worst States for business, which ranked California 50th for the eighth straight year.

The New York Times reported Apple “paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8%.” Further more, Apple’s federal tax bill likely would have been $2.4 billion higher last year without these moves, says the Times. The fact remains Apple paid less tax than it would have otherwise had it not moved operations to low- or no-tax jurisdictions. Good for Apple. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had the same flexibility?

Financial businesses — from banks to investment advisers — will spend 24 million hours a year to comply with the first 185 regulations to implement the Dodd Frank Act, according to the House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee.

Toyota Material Handling USA Inc. is moving its North American headquarters from Irvine to Columbus, Ind., the company announced.

California’s increasing restrictions on independent contractors will slow economic growth and hike the state’s unemployment, according to a new analysis for several business groups. “The Economic Benefits of Preserving Independent Contracting” was prepared by economic policy expert Philip J. Romero.

In 2011, 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs out of state, 26% more than in 2010, according to Irvine business consultant Joe Vranich who has been tracking these departures since 2009.

Even though California’s statewide sales tax declined in June with the expiration of a temporary 1% tax, the Golden State still has the highest statewide sales tax in the country at 7.25%, according to data from the Tax Foundation, a Washington D.C. nonpartisan fiscal research group that favors low taxes. When combined with locally imposed sales taxes averaging 0.86%, California drops to 12th in combined sales tax that consumers pay on most purchases.

An Irvine company has developed what it calls "the world's first self-chilling can" that drops a beverage's temperature 30 degrees in minutes at the push of a button without electricity.

California ranks 46th in business friendliness as measured by 44 different tax and public policy issues, according to a new study from the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, a Virginia-based advocacy group. Still, California ranks at or near the bottom in such categories as personal income tax, personal capital gains tax, gasoline and diesel taxes, per capita state and local government expenditures, per capital state and local government debt and highway cost effectiveness.

California ranks 47th among the states in the number of new company relocations per million population, according to the Site Selection magazine's 2011 Top Business Climates rankings. The relative scarcity of relocations plus California's tax climate – ranked 49th – puts the Golden State at 20th out of 25 states in business climate, the publication reports. California's competitiveness ranks 37th. Texas ranks first.

California has sued in Orange County Superior Court three companies for claiming that their water is sold in plastic bottles that are biodegradable. It is the first action that Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office has taken to enforce the state’s 2008 law that bans the use of the words “biodegradable,”, “degradable” or “compostable” in labeling plastic food or beverage containers.

Legacy Electronics, a high-tech contract manufacturer, has opened its new 40,000-square-foot headquarters in Canton, S.D., closing its San Clemente facility. Engle earlier explained the move: “California, unfortunately has become … a more difficult place to do business, a more costly place to do business, especially for manufacturers.

Despite government efforts to stimulate job creation with tax breaks, small-business owners have said they have to see improvement in their revenues before they feel comfortable hiring again. Now Sageworks Inc., an analyst of private companies’ finances, shows there really is a correlation between business sales and unemployment. Over the past eight years, sales growth at privately owned businesses has moved in inverse relationship to the nation’s unemployment rate. “When sales were down, unemployment was up,” Sageworks says.

California employers would pay as much as $210 million more for workers’ compensation benefits for temporary disabilities if the legislature passes a bill by Orange County Assemblyman Jose Solorio, D-Santa Ana. That’s according to an analysis is from the state Senate Appropriations Committee.