Dear Sir:

I own a boatbuilding and repair business and I am writing to call your attention to House Bill # 1734 (or Senate Bill # 663). This bill is of critical importance to our industry, as it addresses inconsistencies in county property tax treatment as applied to non-resident boat owners using North Carolina businesses for repairs and service. Existing tax practices discriminate against our NC businesses and create an unfair competitive advantage for competing businesses of other coastal states.

North Carolina has over 160 boat building and restoration businesses among its 3,500 marine business across the state. The industry employs over 20,000 residents in the building, maintenance, repair and service of boats and boating. NC has over 353,000 registered boats and it citizens spend approximately $500 million annually on boating.

According to the SBTDC NC Marine Trades Services, our state is becoming the lead state in new and expanding marine businesses. Our central east coast location and our state’s support of the marine industry has resulted in well over 1,000 new job in the past three years and has attracted nationally known builders as Tiara, Rampage, Mako, SeaCraft, Centurion and dozens of growing and thriving smaller builders.

The repair sector of this industry is poised for an equal or greater growth, but it is greatly hampered by the fact that counties impose property taxes on non-resident boat owners in a capricious method that often is the deciding factor for these boat owners to choose VA, SC, GA, and FL as the state for their repair work and boat brokering services.

Please support the proposed House and Senate bills identified above, as they represent a mechanism to even the multi-million dollar competitive repair and brokerage trade for our North Carolina marine businesses. I have additional supporting documentation and comments that may be useful to champion these bills. Please feel to call on me with questions or to support you in any way regarding this effort.

Owner

NC builder and boatyard