COLUMBIA, S.C. — Buying local could pay off for your business at tax time.
South Carolina provides a possible income tax credit or withholding tax credit to agribusinesses or agricultural packaging operations that increase their purchases of products certified as grown in South Carolina by the South Carolina Department of Agriculture.
The program is intended to reward existing companies for buying more agricultural products grown in South Carolina.
To be eligible for this credit, a company must have a base year in which the company purchases more than $100,000 of agricultural products that have been certified as grown in South Carolina by the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, and then must increase the number of agricultural units purchased in the following year by at least 15% over base-year unit totals.
Eligible companies may claim an income tax credit or a credit against employee withholding as decided by the South Carolina Coordinating Council for Economic Development. An individual taxpayer may not be awarded a credit in excess of $100,000 during any calendar year, and the maximum amount of tax credits allowed to all qualifying taxpayers may not exceed $2,000,000.
The application deadline is September 30. For more information about the credit, please contact Laura Jordan, assistant director of agribusiness development at the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, at 803-734-1767 orljordan@scda.sc.gov.
–Eva Moore, SCDA