After more than an hour’s discussion this morning, the House and Senate tax committees have adjourned their joint meeting. House Rev & Tax Chairman Gary Collins said he’s served on a number of interim tax committees over the years, and “at times I thought it was a waste of time in a lot of respects, being a little blunt. But overall, it added to my knowledge of how the system worked.” He said, “I think these type of interim committees can often be a great benefit to the Legislature as a whole. I would, for one, if we had some direction, I would be in favor of moving forward with that.”

Senate Tax Chairman Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, said, “I appreciate everyone coming here and I think maybe you can start to feel some of our frustration. … This tax deal is humongous. We started into the process and we realized just how big that was, and then as we moved up the calendar and saw the session coming towards us, we may’ve panicked just a little on what realistically could be done and what could not be done. And then we of course, with the diversity of opinions on each other’s ideas on perhaps what we should and should not try to do this session, depending on what revenues were going to be available to approach this problem or simplify the tax system or do all of these different things, it seems like we got ran over a little bit there.”

“Whether we go forward or not (with an interim committee) I guess remains to be seen,” Siddoway said. “But we wanted to at least have this meeting to try to get your opinion. And if we do go forward, certainly we’ll have the concurrent resolution in our germane committees to discuss it. Whether it’s an up or down vote depends on if you see any value in going forward.”

Collins said, “Of course we’ll get together with our leadership. ... If we did come up with a concurrent resolution, all 105 of the legislators will be able to weigh in, whether they think we should move ahead on this. And I think that’ll be good too.”