The House and Senate Tax committees are holding a joint meeting this morning in the House Majority Caucus Room, where there’s no online streaming, to hear a report on the Tax Working Group that met over the interim. “We will not be presenting any legislation, we will not be voting on anything,” said House Rev & Tax Chairman Gary Collins, R-Nampa. Collins noted that the working group initially became known as the “super-secret” tax working group, and then later was formalized. The agenda calls for discussion on forming an interim tax committee.

Senate Tax Chairman Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, said the chairmen went back and forth on where to hold the meeting before settling on this room on the fourth floor of the Capitol “The reason we did is we wanted to be eye-to-eye and face to face, read everybody’s body language as we go through this," he said, "kind of get your ideas and see where there is support and where there isn’t support of going on.”

Eric Milstead, director of legislative services, is giving an overview of the working group’s meetings. “The initial meetings were a select group, and then it grew from there,” he said. It started with the two tax chairs, the House speaker and president pro-tem, and legislative staffers making a trip to Utah to meet with Utah lawmakers about that state’s experience with tax reform. “They had an interesting model to examine,” Milstead said. It included an interim committee that held many open, well-publicized meetings around the state.