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Which US States are e-Commerce Friendly?

Posted by Cliff on from the finding-a-place-to-work dept.

pHaze asks: "I am about to take a long drive across the USA with my girlfriend to try and find a state to live in. We are both professional geeks and plan to settle and start a business. We were wondering if slashdotters could offer some advice on which state is the best to start an e-commerce business in. Which has the most e-commerce friendly/unfriendly laws (taxation, copyright, spam, privacy), the highest availability of broadband (and bandwidth in general) and is the most cost effective for a business."

7 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Virginia.... by karrde · · Score: 2, Informative

    After all according to one of our license plate types, we are 'The .com state'

    But seriously look into it, a few years back the Gov. put in some e-commerce insentives to encourage internet buisness to come to VA. Three places you can go that are connected, NoVa (up by DC), Richmond (The capital), and Hampton Roads.

    Each has thier ups and downs.

    1. Re:Virginia.... by Takeel · · Score: 2, Informative

      Three places you can go that are connected, NoVa (up by DC), Richmond (The capital), and Hampton Roads.

      Each has thier ups and downs

      I wouldn't live in any of those areas. All three share ridiculous traffic, a high cost of living, and *very* inflated property values (at least, if you want to live anywhere that doesn't have a very high crime rate).

      However, don't count the Old Dominion out totally. There are other parts of the state that are beautiful, have a lower population density, *and* are reasonably priced; these include the Shenandoah valley and the Roanoke valley.

      If you want to get hardcore rural, you might consider extreme southwestern Virginia...and I do mean hardcore (supermaximum security prisons, double-wide trailers, and no 7-11's in sight for miles). Unfortunately, these areas do have very few high-speed Internet options, if this is one of your criteria.

  2. Online Best Place tool by lwbecker2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    A tool for finding the best place to live is online at BestPlaces.Net.

    There are two versions of the tool: short (15 categories) and long (40 categories).

    The tool has you rate different attributes in terms of "importance to you" and then provides a ranked list of places to live that meet your preferences.

  3. RTP by NetJunkie · · Score: 3, Informative

    I live right near RTP and love it. I'm in a small suburb with good surroundings. You really get the bigger city advantages with the small town appeal. Plus, it's a very tech savvy area. Raleigh was just shown to be the city with the highest rate of residential broadband acceptance in the country.

  4. Re:This might scare you, but it's true. by shakah · · Score: 2, Informative
    FYI, New Jersey upped the minimum corporation tax to $500 from $200 this year (they raised taxes 150% for S Corps, to be sensationalist).

    And things looked even uglier in the final days of the budget process -- there was a seriously-considered proposal to institute a minimum corporate tax based on revenue, not just profits.

  5. Re:Massachusetts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    I highly recommend to NOT do business in Massachusetts. I own a small e-commerce shop running mail order out of the Boston area, and the cost of living is ridiculous. Even with the low occupancy rate of offices and warehouses in the area, the rents are still outrageous.



    The cost of living is on par (maybe slightly lower) with the San Jose / San Francisco / Silicon Valley area for cost of gasoline, food, rent, and housing. Basically, it's outrageous.



    On the plus side...



    The commonwealth does have some economic incentive programs for large companies, and DSL / Cable Modems are everywhere, and the sales tax is reasonably low (5%). There's stuff to do every weekend, we've got colleges and universities up the wazoo for college interns.



    We're thinking of moving our business to Las Vegas. Cheap land, reasonable work force, no income taxes... We'll see how that pans out.

  6. Re:Texas by GoRK · · Score: 3, Informative

    Texas does; however, have a law that says they get to collect state sales tax on EVERY e-commerce transaction that's conducted on a server within its borders. Texas is also exempt from the current federal Internet sales tax moratorium. And, that lack of state income tax, well, you really pay for it with an 8.25% state sales tax (higher in some localities). Can you imagine making a resident of another state pay a sales tax rate that is double or triple what he'd pay in his own state?

    This is a *MAJOR* sticking point that is ignored by a lot of small companies that have webservers here and could easily get bit. The big companies HQ'd here -- Dell, for instance, do not keep servers within the state borders for this reason.

    [Source: Report of Texas Internet Tax Policy Working Group ]