Community Renewal Good Stories - West-Central

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RC Tax Incentives Boost Local Hunting Company

West-Central Mississippi, RC

RC tax incentives have allowed one Mississippi business to streamline its flow of operations and expand its employment base. Primos, Inc., is a small family-owned company located in the heart of the West- Central Mississippi RC. The company was started by Will Primos in 1976 when he started selling homemade hunting calls to local hunters. By 1979 Primos had to hire several people to assist him in making the calls to keep up with the national demand, and Primos Hunting Calls was born.

Primos Hunting Calls has more than 150 employees and manufactures around 300 products, which include calls, videos, clothing, and accessories for hunting turkey, elk, waterfowl, deer, and predators. The company currently holds 14 patents and numerous trademarks.

In 2002 Primos received a $2.5 million CRD allocation for the construction of its new 54,000-square-foot facility in Flora, Mississippi, thanks to the RC program. According to Will Primos, the new facility has allowed the company to streamline the flow of operations and expand its employment base. The CRD allocation provides Primos the opportunity to greatly accelerate the rate at which the company depreciates the cost associated with constructing the new facility.

Each State with an RC designation is allowed to allocate $12 million in deductions to businesses that construct new facilities or substantially rehabilitate existing facilities for each year of the RC designation. Once a business receives a CRD allocation, it must decide how to deduct the allocated amount based on two options. A business may choose to deduct half of the allocated amount for qualified expenses in the year the building is placed in service with the remaining amount depreciated over the standard 39 years or it may elect to deduct the full allocated amount over a 10-year period.

Since receiving the allocation, Primos has elected to receive its benefits over the next 10 years. Primos also has been able to avail itself of the wage credits that are offered through the RC program. Wage credits allow businesses to deduct up to $1,500 per year for each employee who lives and works in the RC. In 2002 Primos employed 157 employees. After determining each employee's physical address using HUD's address locator at www.hud.gov/crlocator, Primos learned that 90 of the company's employees live in the RC.

For each year of the RC designation through 2009, Primos will be eligible for a wage tax credit up to $1,500 for each employee who lives in the RC. The West-Central Mississippi RC includes portions of 13 counties and 30 municipalities located in central Mississippi, and Primos is only one of thousands of businesses in Mississippi that has received immediate tax relief due to the benefits of the RC program.

For more information on the programs of the West-Central Mississippi Rural RC, contact Bruce Reynolds of the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District at (601) 981-1511.