Senate fails to amend grocery tax bill

BOISE – Senators floated four plans to amend a House-passed grocery tax relief bill Thursday, but all failed.

They’ll try again early next week to amend the House bill that would raise the annual $20 grocery tax credit to $50 and double the $35 credit for seniors. The bill’s price of $47.5 million is more than double what Gov. Butch Otter recommended. Otter proposed a more targeted credit designed to give low-income Idahoans a big credit of up to $90 for sales taxes they pay on groceries.

Here are the four amendments to HB 81 senators voted on Thursday:

“ Sen. Russ Fulcher, R-Meridian, sponsored a plan that also was backed by Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, to scale back the first-year increase in the credit slightly, then increase it substantially in each subsequent year until it entirely offsets the sales tax that Idahoans pay on food. The first year cost was estimated at $32.6 million; six years out it would cost about $122 million a year.

“ Senate Tax Chairman Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, sponsored an amendment to just trim HB 81 so it increases the credit to $40, $60 for seniors. That plan would cost $32.6 million a year, the same as the first-year cost for the Fulcher plan.

“ A bipartisan proposal from Sens. Tim Corder, R-Mountain Home, and David Langhorst, D-Boise, would have remade HB 81 into something more like Otter’s proposal, with two differences: It wouldn’t exclude people on food stamps from receiving the credit, and it wouldn’t give any added boost to seniors. Overall, low-income people would get a big boost in their credit, as Otter proposed, while higher-income Idahoans would lose theirs. That plan would cost $24.9 million a year.

“ Sen. Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, proposed an amendment to do away with the extra credit for seniors. That would save the state $4 million a year.

Keough urged support for the multiyear plan, despite its cost. “I believe that we can afford it – it’s simply a matter of priority,” she said.

Hill argued for his plan, saying it was “just to give you another option – albeit the best option.”

Corder said his bipartisan plan is the only one Otter has pledged to sign into law. “This fits the price tag that he wanted,” Corder told the Senate.

Langhorst said, “If you want to see relief this year, this is your amendment.”

But Hill countered that the targeted credit for the low-income amounted to “coercion to charity.” HB 81, on the other hand, allows an option for people who want to donate their credit to the needy. The other amendments kept that provision.

“Let’s allow the citizens to make that decision themselves, rather than having us decide how to redistribute their money,” Hill told the Senate.

Siddoway said his proposal to remove the extra credit for seniors “makes us all fit into the same age bracket.”

About a dozen of the 35 senators voted for each of the first three amendments, falling short of a majority in each case. Only about half a dozen stood in support of Siddoway’s.

“Now we know what ideas have little support on the floor, so we’ll give the parties a few days,” said Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls. “The process needed to give the senators an opportunity to pare off the ideas for which there is lesser traction.” But Davis said if a second attempt at amending the bill fails next week, the Senate will just vote on HB 81 as-is.

Lawmakers hope to adjourn their session in the next two weeks.