The 2025 Georgia Legislation Session is in the history books, and the state’s business community is touting the legislation that will help businesses.
A news release from the Georgia Chamber of Commerce detailed a series of pro-business legislation that made it through the General Assembly. The measures await Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) signature.
“The Georgia Chamber and our tens of thousands of members across the state applaud the Georgia General Assembly and our legislative leaders, in particular Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones and Speaker of the House Jon Burns, for their work passing important pieces of legislation for the Georgia business community,” said Chris Clark, Chamber President and CEO in the news release.
Among the approved bills are HB 111, lowering the state’s income tax rate, and HB 112, which provides a one-time tax credit for taxpayers who filed returns in both 2023 and 2024.
“Obviously, it’s a boost to the economy that I think people want to move to areas where you know you get the benefits of taxpayer dollars, but you’re not being overly taxed,” Russell Lahodny, President and CEO of the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce, told ABD.
Lahodny also believes the tax cut is particularly impactful as Georgia competes with Florida, which has no personal income tax, and South Carolina, which is lowering its rate, for businesses and residents.
“We have to be competitive with our neighboring states,” he said. “Between the chamber and our governor, he’s working really hard to make sure that we’re competitive, but yet we’re still being responsible to the citizens or the residents of Georgia, and we’re providing all the things that they need.”
He said Hurricane Helene demonstrated the need for the state to have a surplus, a contingency fund to help pay for recovery, but not to build the surplus just to build it.
Legislators also approved HB 192, titled the Top State for Talent Act providing “specific references to programs included in the High-demand Career List published by the State Workforce Development Board with respect to the State Board of Education’s minimum course of study in career education for students in grades six through 12; to establish an updated list of the state models and industry required content standards for focused programs of study to be developed by the Department of Education and approved by the State Board of Education.”
“It’s really just making sure that we’re tracking with the different types of career paths in our region and making sure that our schools preparing our workforce for the jobs that we have and not preparing them for something that that might be obsolete by the time they graduate, or we just don’t have those types of careers here,” said Lahodny. “This is an important step to making sure that we are on track to make sure that we’re building a solid workforce for our future.”
The two biggest bills, and those most important to the Governor, are SB 68 and SB 69, the components of Kemp’s tort reform package.
“We especially thank the Georgia General Assembly for consistently voting in a bipartisan manner to pass SB 68 and SB 69, the two bills in Governor Brian Kemp’s tort reform package. The legislation passed during the 2025 Legislative Session is critical to keeping Georgia the number one state in the country to do business,” said Clark.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce tracks the financial impact of lawsuits, specifically tort cases.
When releasing the most current figures in November 2024, the Chamber described the costs as “massive and rising.” The Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform found that costs and compensation connected to tort litigation totaled $529 billion nationwide in 2022. That represents 2.1% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and more than $4,200 per American household.
Looking state-by-state, Georgia is second only to California in the per-household costs of tort lawsuits.
- California ($5,429)
- Georgia ($5,050)
- Texas ($4,594)
- Illinois ($4,281)
The ranking reflects Georgia’s total cost at $19,931,606,019, which is 2.6% of the state’s GDP. The impact has grown by an average of 10.6% from 2016 through 2022.
By comparison, the per-household cost in South Carolina is just over $3,700, and $7,553,730,326 in total tort costs paid statewide, or 2.5% of its GDP. That’s an average growth rate of 8.7% from 2016 through 2022.
Lahodny believes the Georgia legislation is a huge step forward to curtail what he called the “nuclear verdicts” on some lawsuits.
“We’re not trying to take away somebody’s right to get justice in any situation. Let’s just create a fair way of doing it and not setting up the business side or the insurance side of things for taking the hit,” he said. “Now we have a little bit more level playing field where we can compete with some of our neighboring states that already have tort reform.”
The U.S. Chamber began tracking tort reform costs in 2016, and the average growth rate is 7.1%. That figure rises to 8.7% when looking only at cases involving businesses. At the current rate, the Chamber estimates the costs will balloon to more than $900 billion by 2030.
The full report is available at: www.uschamber.com/lawsuits/hidden-costs-lawsuits-grow
