>During a recent discussion of WPF and the possibility of using it in our applications the topic of what business benefits this new technology provides came up. We are a shop that has several small development teams creating and maintaining windows desktop applications. The applications we develop are not web enabled. We do not and will not have “designers” on staff.
>I can see plenty of negative expense in using this new technology but was unable to point to a single benefit.

What did you regard as the negatives?
Or, conversely, what do you see as the advantages of remaining with WinForms?

>Are there any tangible benefits to using WPF beyond have a cool toolbar or button?

I've a feeling that, after an initial learning curve, you will be more productive building Windows apps with WPF. I found the control class hierarchy to be more logical and control behaviour to be more consistent in general. And you get huge flexibility when designing controls.
And, although you may not need it now, one day it's likely you'll want UI functionality that will be nigh impossible with WinForms but a doddle with WPF.

Regards,
Viv