Senate OKs tax-break review
BOISE – As a committee chairman, Sen. Brent Hill can kill new tax exemption bills just by leaving them in his desk drawer.
“I’ve got five in my drawer that will not be heard,” Hill said. The Senate tax chairman and Rexburg Republican said Idaho now has 84 sales tax exemptions, “at last count. We would’ve had 89 if it hadn’t been for my drawer right there.”
Hill is trying to draw a line, stopping new tax breaks until lawmakers take a look at the big picture: which exemptions or credits it should offer and why.
On Monday, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution sponsored by Hill and two other senators to set up a summer study committee to take that bigger look.
“It is not my goal to target any particular exemptions at this point in time, but to set some goals and principles,” Hill told the Senate.
That way, he said, “We’re not just reacting to every bill that comes across the desk.”
It’s been tried before. Four years ago, lawmakers set up a joint legislative task force co-chaired by the heads of the Senate and House tax committees. The two sharply disagreed, and the committee couldn’t reach any conclusions.
But both those chairmanships have changed hands with the retirements of House Chairwoman Dolores Crow, R-Nampa, and Senate Chairman Hal Bunderson, R-Meridian. Hill said his Senate panel has “a working relationship we’ve never had before” with the tax committee in the House, which is chaired by Rep. Dennis Lake, R-Blackfoot.
Lake said, “The two chairmen get along very well, and on tax policy, I think we have a reasonable agreement.”
He said it was easy for his committee to pass the new tax exemptions this year for worthy causes like the Valley House homeless shelter in Twin Falls, knowing that the Senate would stop them all. “We passed ‘em out,” Lake said. “They did fit the mold” of previous exemptions.
Lake said there’s interest in the House as well as in the Senate in taking a big-picture look at Idaho’s tax structure and exemptions. “I think it’ll fly,” he said of the study proposal.
The resolution states, “The tax structure in place has become out of balance. … Many tax exemptions, deductions or credits have been enacted by the Legislature over the past three decades and these need to be examined to determine their relevance in today’s global economy and society.”
The summer committee, which would include members of both the House and Senate tax committees, would “undertake and complete a study of the state’s tax exemptions, deductions and credits in all of their aspects, and … make recommendations for a strategy to statutorily limit” them.
The resolution, SCR 119, now moves to the House.