Governor Scott Calls for Tax Cuts to Create Jobs and Grow Manufacturing at Plasma-Therm

Statement

Today, Governor Rick Scott visited the Plasma-Therm headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida to highlight his commitment to eliminating sales taxes for investments on manufacturing equipment. With just a handful of days until the 2013 Florida Legislative session begins, Governor Scott discussed his Building Up Florida Manufacturing Jobs proposal, intended to help small manufacturing businesses grow and offer more opportunities for Florida families.

Governor Scott said, "Manufacturing is a vital part of Florida's economy and companies like Plasma-Therm play an important role in providing jobs and opportunities. Today there are 17,500 manufacturing companies in Florida that that employ over 300,000 Florida families. Over the past two years, we put our economy back on track and created almost 200,000 new private sector jobs. The efforts that we are taking at the state and local levels will help ensure every Floridian who wants a job can get one."

"Plasma-Therm is a worldwide leader and pioneer in high tech manufacturing for our nation and our military. We are proud they decided to call Florida home," said Governor Scott. "We want to remove barriers to their success and growth by eliminating sales taxes on manufacturing equipment."

"At Plasma-Therm we support Governor Scott's initiative to cut sales taxes on manufacturing equipment," said Ed Ostan, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Plasma-Therm. "Additional revenue that would be created through tax cuts could be channeled to our R&D budget and in turn, create jobs even faster than we can today. It will allow us to re-invest a large percentage of our revenue each year in research for the development of new products. This development enables us to be competitive in the global market and fosters continued growth. As we grow, jobs are created in manufacturing, science, engineering and finance."

Plasma-Therm is a U.S. based manufacturer of etch and thin film deposition equipment for a number of global compound semiconductor and related specialty markets. For more than 35 years, they have enabled various process technologies by coupling reliable platforms with award-winning service. They hold over 37 patents for innovation in plasma process technologies.

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