By Paolo Del Nibletto
Another great day of meetings at the Venture Tech Network conference in San Diego. At the morning sessions, HP’s Ramona Thibeault stunned the packed audience of more than 800 solution providers when she mentioned a U.S. tax subsidy.
According to Thibeault, the vice-president of SMB sales, solution partners organization Americas, if you have lost $800,000 in your business you can apply to get half of it back through this subsidy.
Thibeault’s advice got every channel partner at my table and around me scrambling for their Blackberries to either check it out online or text someone to find out more information.
Now, Canadian solution providers are not fortunate enough to have this sort of tax break. But I asked Dave Frederickson, HP Canada’s channel chief, about it and he told me that he has gone as far as to meeting with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty about helping Canadian solution providers with more tax saving incentives.
Frederickson believes more can be done by the Canadian government, especially now with a downturn in the economy.
Talking with Canadian solution providers about the prospect of getting a tax break most would like anything that would save them money, but strategically more tax incentives for Green IT would be a better plan.
JoeAnne Hardy, president of WBM Solutions in Saskatoon, is a big proponent of Green IT and has developed many Green solutions, such as Print Optimization.