What's happening on North Sprigg?

Have you noticed the dirt work just north of the Rhodes convenience store on North Sprigg Street across from the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau? By late December or early January, the site will be the location of a new Rally's fast-food drive-through.

The North Sprigg Street Rally's is one of three being built this fall in Southeast Missouri by Cape Girardeau-based PAJCO. The others are in Dexter and Poplar Bluff.

Brent Anderson of PAJCO said the Cape, Dexter and Poplar Bluff locations will have the "same format and same look" as the company's three other Rally's — the two PAJCO opened in Jackson and Sikeston about a year ago and one in Farmington the company acquired earlier this month.

"When something's going well, you want to replicate it," Brent told me.

Site preparations are underway along North Sprigg Street in Cape Girardeau, just north of the Rhodes convenience store, where a Rally's fast-food drive-through is scheduled to open in late December or early January.Jay Wolz

P&G pays higher than average overall taxes

One of Cape Girardeau County's largest employers, and one of the biggest companies in the world, paid one of the highest overall tax rates in 2019.

The Procter & Gamble Co., which produces diapers and paper products at its sprawling production facility north of Cape Girardeau, paid the seventh-highest overall tax rate last year among S&P 100 companies, according to a study released last week by WalletHub.

The WalletHub report, which arrived in my email last Tuesday, said P&G's 2019 overall tax rate — combining federal, state and international rates — was 34.65%.

Only six other companies on the S&P 100 list paid higher overall rates. They were Qualcomm Inc. (41.37%), Chevron Corp. (48.61%), General Electric (63.19%), salesforce.com (82.15%), Altria Group Inc. (a whopping 269.45%), and Occidental Petroleum Corp. (an even more whopping 372.58%).

On the other side of the spectrum, the 10 companies listed as paying the lowest overall taxes in '19 were Netflix (9.47%), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (9.19%), Pfizer Inc. (7.83%), IBM (7.19%), AbbVie Inc. (6.46%), NVIDIA Corp. (5.86%), Mondelez International Inc. (0.06%), American Tower Corp. (0.01%), and Gilead Sciences Inc. (-3.95%).

Among key findings of the WalletHub study:

• The overall tax rate S&P 100 companies pay is about 19%.
• S&P 100 companies pay roughly 6% lower rates on U.S. taxes than international taxes.
• Most tech companies — including Adobe, Oracle and Cisco Systems — are still paying more than 5% lower rates abroad, continuing a trend that began in 2013 and continued in every year since.
• The average S&P 100 company pays a 29% lower tax rate than the top 1% of consumers.

The full S&P 100 tax-rate report can be found at www.wallethub.com/edu/corporate-tax-rates/28330.

Medical marijuana sales underway in Missouri

The first legal sales of medical marijuana in Missouri took place Saturday at a state-licensed dispensary, according to an email I received over the weekend from the Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services (DHSS), which regulates the state's medical marijuana program. The email did not indicate where the sale took place, but state officials told me last week it would probably be in either the St. Louis or Kansas City area.

DHSS expects most of the state's licensed 192 dispensaries to open by the end of the year, but as I reported last week, several of the dispensaries licensed in the Cape Girardeau and Jackson area probably won't open until early next year.

In the meantime, the number of Missourians who have qualified to purchase medical cannabis products continues to grow.

As of last month, nearly 75,000 people with various qualifying conditions had received permits to purchase medical marijuana and marijuana-infused products, and that number is growing by more than 5,000 a month.

In addition to the qualified patients, nearly 3,000 applications have been approved for "caregivers," people who will be allowed to purchase medical marijuana products on behalf of others.

According to data I received last week from DHSS, the county-by-county breakdown for medical marijuana patient permits in Southeast Missouri as of Oct. 13 was as follows:

• Bollinger — 107
• Butler — 459
• Cape Girardeau — 671
• Dunklin — 248
• Mississippi — 39
• New Madrid — 163
• Pemiscot — 132
• Perry — 247
• Ripley — 103
• Scott — 297
• Stoddard — 349
• Wayne — 149

As you might expect, the St. Louis and Kansas City regions have the largest numbers of patient permits. Nearly 9,000 permits had been granted as of early last week in St. Louis and St. Louis County and almost 3,700 patient permits have been approved in St. Charles County. Residents of Jefferson County, just south of the St. Louis metropolitan area, had received almost 2,600 medical marijuana patient permits as of last week.

Big turnout expected for drive-in opening

Wednesday night's opening of the Rock 'N' Roll Drive-In is sold out, but tickets are still available online for shows Thursday through Saturday night.

"Tickets went on sale Thursday at 10 a.m. and by 10:18 a.m. tickets were sold out for opening night," Sarah Estes, drive-in marketing director, told me Friday.

The family-friendly outdoor theater is in Blomeyer, along Highway 25 between Dutchtown and Chaffee.

Opening night will include a double feature on the drive-in's 80-by-50-foot screen — "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby."

Gates will open at 5 p.m. with the first feature starting about two hours later.

In addition to the drive-in's concession stand, several food trucks will also be on site, including Straight Line Swine BBQ, Sugar Chic, Gabriel's and The German Cook.

To purchase tickets or for information about upcoming shows, visit the drive-in's website, www.rocknrolldrivein.com.

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