The decision by Samsung Electronics Co. to relocate its U.S. headquarters from Englewood Cliffs to Plano, Texas, has sent shockwaves through the New Jersey business community and the state’s political class. It marked another chapter in the state’s inability to retain corporations within the Garden State.
For John Boyd Jr., founder of The Boyd Company Inc. relocation firm based in Princeton, the fact that Samsung’s move was announced early in the new governor’s term is “a five-alarm fire wake-up call. New Jersey cannot continue to swim upstream with new tax hikes, especially when a key Northeast competitor state like Pennsylvania is cutting taxes.”
Pennsylvania has been phasing down its Corporate Net Income Tax from a 9.99% rate in 2022 to a scheduled 4.99% by 2031.
A Samsung official told South Korean media that the company plans to complete the move within this year. Some Samsung employees will remain in New Jersey to manage local operations. The company has not said how many jobs will be eliminated rather than relocated. About 1,000 employees work at the Englewood Cliffs headquarters, and most are expected to be reassigned to the new headquarters in Plano.
The bombshell relocation announcement comes less than a year after Samsung Electronics shifted its U.S. headquarters from a 325,000-square-foot building in Ridgefield Park to Englewood Cliffs on Sept. 22, 2025 — an event celebrated by state and local officials.
Samsung was drawn to Englewood Cliffs because of its proximity to New York City and the town’s value improvement ordinance, which provided tax abatements for internal improvements and cosmetic upgrades to the building. The Englewood Cliffs Tax Collector’s Office said June 3 that Samsung paid the city $720,338 in corporate taxes. The office said LG Electronics is the largest corporate taxpayer in Englewood Cliffs.
The New Jersey Economic Development Authority said June 3 that Samsung has not received any incentives from the NJEDA.
“Incentives never are leading site selection factors,” said Boyd. “The reality today is that our clients want the best location and financial assistance from the winning state to help write down the cost of the move. Incentives never serve as band-aids for anti-competitive tax-and-spend policies. Some of the most effective incentives today are targeted at workforce development and site readiness.”
New Jersey has the highest corporate tax rate in the country at 11.5% and is battling a national reputation for being business-unfriendly because of regulations and other costs and burdens. Texas has no corporate tax rate and no state income tax.
“Even more burdensome than the corporate income tax are personal income tax rates in New Jersey, its sky-high property taxes and the high cost of living for employees,” said Boyd. “From a site selection lens, that shows up in higher wage demands, tougher recruitment for human resources managers and greater pressure on companies to offer costly relocation and housing support in order to successfully recruit on a national basis.”
Texas offers several advantages over other regions, including favorable tax policies and lower real estate costs, making it an increasingly attractive destination for major technology companies.
Boyd explained that there are other considerations for Samsung’s reason to decamp to the Lone Star State.
“Just as businesses and money go where they are welcome, so does new housing and real estate development,” Boyd said. “The Dallas Metroplex is home to some of the newest large scale mixed-use development and corporate-friendly housing inventory in the nation today. Our relocation clients are not just leasing new space or buying new real estate parcels; they are buying into a broader ecosystem of modern housing, good schools, lifestyle amenities and infrastructure that helps them win the war for talent.”
Forty years ago, New Jersey could lean on its public education system and proximity to New York as advantages, Boyd said. But the national landscape has dramatically changed since then.
“In today’s world, there are new clusters of corporate influence and wealth in hubs like Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Phoenix, etc., vastly improved public schools along with greater access to private schools and next-gen workforce initiatives,” Boyd continued.
“New Jersey needs more business-friendly reforms more than ever, going beyond just cutting taxes and spending and cutting red tape to becoming more of a partner with business and job creators — not an antagonist. For every high-profile relocation like Honeywell, Mercedes, Exxon and Samsung, there are dozens of New Jersey companies each year choosing to scale under the radar screen in lower-cost, more business-friendly states.
“There are also opportunity costs — companies that NEVER consider New Jersey for a relocation due to its notoriously difficult business climate. We will never know who and how many of those companies that reject New Jersey from the get-go.”
Even as New Jersey’s business and political establishment reeled from the Samsung announcement, Boyd held up optimism about the Sherrill administration.
“I think they got the message with the sting of the Samsung decision,” Boyd said. “The governor has a number of smart advisers from the business community that she listens to and there are real opportunities to improve the business climate for high-growth and timely sectors for New Jersey in areas like AI and aerospace.
“The test, however, will be whether those pro‑growth intentions translate into hard choices on tax policy, permitting reform and long‑term pension and infrastructure costs – that’s what CEOs ultimately respond to – or will the national politics of the moment be of more importance to her administration.”