Georgia’s Jobs and Family Tax Reform Plan has already paid dividends. The elimination of the sales tax on energy used in manufacturing played a critical role, for example, in Georgia’s successful wooing of Caterpillar. When fully phased in, this exemption will save manufacturers $150 million per year. Even as we focus on boosting manufacturing jobs, we cut taxes for our state’s No. 1 industry by $17 million a year. This bill creates a more consistent tax code for the agriculture industry by revising sales tax exemptions and abandoning a patchwork system that penalized some agribusinesses.

I saw the benefits of the agricultural sections of the bill firsthand this week in Albany, where a company that makes crop-duster planes competes with a similar plant in Texas and with ground rigs that spray crops. Thrush Aircraft has grown rapidly in recent years, expanding employment from 65 to nearly 150 jobs. It also exports 60 percent to 75 percent of its planes, often utilizing the Port of Savannah. But the company faced ridiculous disadvantages in our Swiss cheese of a tax code.

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