NORWICH – Chenango County employers have until the end of the year to hire veterans and receive special tax credits as the Returning Heroes and Wounded Warriors Work Opportunity Tax Credits is currently set to expire Jan. 1. Since President Obama signed the Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011 into law, the tax credits, which are a subsection of the act, have benefited employers and veterans alike. Business owners can receive up to $9,600 in tax credits for each qualified veteran they have employed, providing them with an extra incentive to hire wounded or unemployed veterans.
With the recent end of the Iraq War, the number of unemployed veterans has increased, and decreasing that number may become an even greater challenge with the impending withdrawal from U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Subsequently, increasing the number of employed veterans has garnered the attention and efforts of numerous U.S. policy makers.
“Only the veterans portion of the The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) was renewed in 2011 and it was expanded to include more categories of veterans,” said Chenango-Delaware-Otsego CDO Workforce Business Services representative Alan Sessions. “We still continue to accept certifications in the hope it will be renewed.”
Saturday, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer visited Ioxus, Inc. in Oneonta, as the first step in his drive to get the tax credits renewed for 2013. “Renewing the veterans’ tax credits isn’t just the smart thing to do for manufacturers and other companies in the Southern Tier and across the country, it’s the right thing to do to honor the sacrifices made by our heroes in uniform,” Schumer said, according to a press release. “Our veterans have spent months and even years of their lives protecting our freedom, and I am going to fight to renew these tax breaks so that veterans don’t spend the same amount of time in the unemployment line.”
Norwich Manpower manager Lori Olsen has a special connection with the unemployed veterans she helps to place because she served in the Navy for 13 years, and is currently a member of the Air Force. Since the end of the war in Iraq, Olsen has noticed a dramatic increase in the number of veterans who are coming to her in search of work.
“There has been a big increase since end of Iraq war; they have almost doubled in number,” she said of the unemployed veterans she finds work for. Many veterans get referred to Olsen because she is an active member of the community and it is widely known that she herself is a veteran. “I know what they have gone for and they have great work ethic,” she added with pride.
Olsen services employers who specifically tell her to inform them when a veteran comes to her in search of work. “I have about 10 companies who specifically ask for veterans, with a 50/50 ratio of big and small businesses,” she said.
