The recent announcement that Burlington Stores is leaving Burlington County was a sobering moment for New Jersey that should make us pause and take stock.
Burlington isn’t simply a company headquartered in South Jersey. It was born here. Its first store opened in Burlington, New Jersey in 1972. From those beginnings, it grew into a Fortune 500 company with approximately 1,300 stores nationwide, all while keeping its headquarters in the community whose name it carries.
Now Burlington plans to move that headquarters to Philadelphia, where it will make a roughly $370 million investment just 25 miles from the place it has always called home.
Burlington has said it outgrew its current headquarters, and we should take the company at its word. But when one of our own homegrown Fortune 500 companies needed to make its next major investment, we should be asking why staying in New Jersey wasn’t the best option on the table.
This isn’t the fault of the Sherrill Administration. Governor Sherrill is less than a year into her tenure, and Burlington’s search for a new headquarters began before she took office. Instead, Burlington’s departure should serve as an early wake-up call and an opportunity for the Governor, who has made improving New Jersey’s affordability and competitiveness a top priority.
We’ve faced this question with Burlington before. In 2012, the company was considering locations in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Then-Governor Chris Christie’s administration acted. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority approved an incentive package that helped keep Burlington, and hundreds of jobs, in Burlington County. When the company broke ground on its new headquarters the following year, Burlington’s then-president and CEO specifically thanked Governor Christie and the State of New Jersey for making it possible to maintain and grow its headquarters here.
Fourteen years later, Burlington made a different choice. Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia put together a significant package to attract the company, including $30 million in state support and additional city incentives.
But incentives aren’t the whole story. Pennsylvania is also steadily reducing its Corporate Net Income Tax. The rate, once 9.99 percent, is 7.49 percent today and is scheduled to fall to 4.99 percent by 2031. Meanwhile here at home, New Jersey’s largest businesses can face an effective corporate tax rate of 11.5 percent, the highest top corporate rate in the nation.
That contrast matters. Companies don’t make major location decisions based on a single tax rate. They weigh workforce, infrastructure, transportation, real estate, energy costs, incentives, taxes, and the overall predictability and cost of doing business. New Jersey has enormous advantages in many of those areas, but we cannot take them for granted. When a neighboring state is deliberately driving down its corporate tax rate while ours remains the highest in the country, it becomes part of the competitive equation.
In 2012, New Jersey successfully competed to keep Burlington. In 2026, Pennsylvania competed and won. We can’t afford to lose the next one.
Governor Sherrill has an opportunity, at the start of her administration, to ask what we can do differently, and the business community stands ready to be a partner in finding those answers.
The symbolism here is hard to ignore. A company that started here, grew here, and carries the name of a New Jersey county has decided that its next chapter will be written across the Delaware River. We may not be able to change Burlington’s decision. But we should learn from it, before the next homegrown New Jersey company makes the same one.
Christina M. Renna is president & CEO of the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey
