Mona is uninhabited through large parts of the year except for employees of the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources. Of the latter five, only Culebra and Vieques are inhabited year-round. Puerto Rico consists of a main island of Puerto Rico and various smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, Mona, Desecheo, and Caja de Muertos. You can visit an online casino where you can play blackjack or roulette. San Juan has become a major cruise ship port, with over one million passengers passing thru each year. Puerto Rico is a hub for air travel in the Caribbean, from the United States, as well as Europe. Augustine, FloridaĪ thousand miles southeast of Miami, Puerto Rico is a crossroads for business today just as it was centuries ago when ships laden with silver from South America sailed into port on their way home to Spain with their treasures. San Juan, its capital city, was founded in 1521, 40 years before the first settlement in the United States, St. As a matter of fact, Puerto Rico is the oldest community under the American flag. While Puerto Rico is a part of the United States, its culture and social mores are charmingly Spanish. The principal differences include the culture, the Spanish language and the incomparable weather. Puerto Rico is different from any other community in which you have ever lived. In the distance, cool green mountains promise the option of an escape to small towns and country roads reminiscent of earlier times. Ahead, the modern hotels of the Condado and Isla Verde areas rise along the sands of the beach, and to your right, the gleaming glass towers of the Hato Rey banking district reflect the sun. There, to your left, the ancient Spanish fortress of El Morro juts into the Atlantic Ocean, symbol of centuries of history. Hernández Mayoral is secretary of Federal Affairs for the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico.The rich variety of Puerto Rico lies below like a visitor's buffet.
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That is why its proponents frame the argument in terms of poetic yearnings for equality, diverting attention from the economics of statehood. Puerto Rico’s small tax base makes statehood inadequate for the U.S.
Cost of a big mac in puerto rico plus#
One can only begin to imagine the effect of losing the 25,000 direct jobs those relocating corporations now contribute, plus its perhaps 50,000 indirect jobs, and the over 100,000 jobs the government would have to sacrifice when its budget is axed right down the middle. Throw in a concomitant revision of corporate tax rates, and half of Puerto Rico’s budget is gone. If Puerto Rico brings its state individual income taxes in line with Hawaii’s, the highest of any state, those revenues are reduced by more than $1.3 billion. The report says that Puerto Rico would have to revise its tax structure because it cannot just pile federal taxes on top of its high tax rates. That is 20 percent of the budget being wiped out. The corporations that GAO believes would relocate to other jurisdictions if Puerto Rico becomes a state currently contribute $1.7 billion to the budget. Factor in the effects of statehood and all you see is devastation. Its bonds are now in junk status out of fears regarding liquidity. Puerto Rico has a $9 billion budget that is so tight it requires constant colossal efforts to balance that consistently fail. Liberals might still consider the matter if statehood could do Puerto Rico good. That Puerto Rican statehood would costs billions of dollars is enough for fiscal conservatives to consider the case closed. That is considerably less than the $5.6 billion GAO estimates statehood could cost, and astronomically less than the $10 billion the Resident Commissioner tells Puerto Ricans they will get from statehood. Since $1.4 billion are currently collected from those corporations, the net gain in corporate tax revenues under statehood would range from minus 1.35 billion to $2 billion.Īdd another $232 million in gasoline taxes, and the grand total in additional tax revenues from Puerto Rico would lie within a range of $1.1 billion to $4.5 billion.
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corporations that currently operate there as controlled foreign corporations “would likely” relocate “to lower tax foreign locations” if Puerto Rico became a state, thus dampening potential tax revenues to the numbers above. The report points out that experts at the Department of Treasury and the Joint Committee on Taxation believe many U.S. It estimates that federal corporate tax revenues under statehood would range between -50 million to $3.4 billion under what GAO considers the likely scenario. GAO estimates that federal individual income taxes from Puerto Rico could total $2.3 billion.