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Strategies & Market Trends : Market Gems-Trading Strong Earnings Growth and Momentum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hoffy who wrote (3949)	2/7/2001 12:03:30 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6445

Intel Boss Calls for High-Tech Tax Credit By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) Chairman Andrew Grove said Tuesday that Congress should include an item in its tax-cut package to encourage small businesses to invest in computers, software and high-speed Internet connections. Citing a slowing economy and figures showing that few small firms conduct business online, the founder of the world's top computer-chip maker said Congress should provide a 10 percent tax credit for information-technology purchases by companies with fewer than 100 employees. Large businesses have invested heavily in high-tech infrastructure over the past decade, Grove said, but small businesses have not kept up. ``The real digital divide in the U.S. economy is between small-business have-nots and large businesses that have made large investments'' in information technology, he said. Speaking at a dinner held by the World Affairs Council to honor Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to India and the Russian Federation, Grove outlined a legislative wish list that had much in common with one presented to lawmakers by a prominent high-tech trade group last week. Grove called for a tax credit for companies providing residential high-speed access, a doubling of government funding for high-tech research and development, a loosening of immigration restrictions for high-tech college graduates, greater investment in science education, and a continued commitment to free trade. But it was the small-business tax credit that he plugged the hardest, saying that smaller business would suffer competitively if they did not move at least some of their operations online. Grove said that Congress would be wise to add the credit to the Bush administration's proposed $1.6 trillion tax-cut package. ``If there's going to be a tax cut, I'd like to take a small part of it and put it into the business economy. ... I think it will do more good dollar for dollar'' than money spent for other purposes, he said. Grove did not deny that the tax cut would help high-tech firms, such as Intel, that have recently seen business drop off. ``Our business needs a boon,'' he said. Grove said he had met with lawmakers earlier in the day and they had been receptive to his ideas. He was introduced by Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, who said Intel was one of the largest employers in his state. ``We now produce more computer chips than wood chips,'' Smith joked.