The headlines were downright shocking. As The Connecticut Mirror put it, "Study finds Connecticut's business tax burden is lightest in the nation."

Well, yes and no.

The study, prepared by Ernst & Young, analyzed state corporate, income and unemployment and municipal property taxes and compared that with the overall gross state product. Taxes paid by Connecticut businesses represented just 3.3 percent of the state's economic output, by that measure the lowest in the nation, below such tax havens as New Hampshire and Delaware.

Connecticut Voices for Children, a nonprofit advocacy group, used the report to challenge the efforts by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration to attract jobs by offering big tax breaks and state aid. The priority, it argued, should instead be lowering energy costs and improving health care and education to make Connecticut more attractive for business.

Yet, in its 2010 report, "Total state and local business taxes," Ernst & Young states that while it is "one metric that can be used to evaluate a state's business tax structure" it "is not a clear indicator of the competitiveness of a state's business tax system."

Bummer.

For an analysis of the competitiveness of state and local taxes on new business investment, the accounting firm sends readers to another report released last April, the aptly named "Competitiveness of state and local business taxes on new investment."

Alas, by that measure Connecticut ranks 38th in its ability to attract capital investment with an effective tax rate (ETR) of 8.9 percent and 32nd when weighted for job creation potential, with an ETR of 9.4 percent. In New England, only Rhode Island ranks lower.

The ETR approach combines estimates of the actual tax amounts imposed on hypothetical new investments with information on the nation-wide composition of recent new capital investment, creating a weighted average of business tax burdens on the types of investments that states are currently pursuing. Maine ranks first, with an ETR of 3 percent.

These companion reports would suggest that when it comes to attracting business Connecticut's tax policies are not as burdensome as many would suggest, nor as benign as Connecticut Voices for Children would like to think.

In any event, taxes alone do not determine where businesses locate. Other factors work in Connecticut's favor - a skilled and educated workforce, a temperate climate, a high level of public services and recreational opportunities. Others, including high labor and energy costs, do not.

But if the Malloy administration can, within reasonable limits, offer tax incentives to tip the scales in the state's favor and attract or keep large employers it is a policy worth pursuing. Only through growing the state economy, and thus boosting tax revenues, can Connecticut provide the kind of stable tax policies that businesses desire.