Taxes and Public Finance: A Very Early Look at What We Are Following

We have yet to see the complete list of bills that have been introduced, and no bills having primarily to do with tax have yet been heard in committee. But of those that are available for viewing and assigned to committee, quite a few are worthy of note. They may or may not ultimately get a hearing, so it cannot be said that they are moving. Nevertheless, these bills are ones to keep an eye on.

Two measures will undoubtedly move through to the end of session – albeit with the expected/unexpected twists and turns. House Bill 1001 on the budget currently contains the Holcomb administration’s spending proposals – that is until the Ways and Means Committee has its way with it. Accompanying it will be HB 1002, the measure for long-term transportation funding (see Mark Lawrance’s infrastructure story).

There are the usual sales tax exemption and sales tax holiday bills, which historically have not been favored by the budget makers: HB 1063, HB 1111 and SB 53. There are many dealing with property tax assessment and property tax appeals, which could get some attention: HB 1046, HB 1056, HB 1105, HB 1198, HB 1229, HB 1299, SB 292, SB 331, SB 350 and SB 415. Meanwhile, SB 449 addresses how personal property tax audits can be funded; SB 308 would take heavy equipment that is rented off the property tax rolls and puts an excise tax on the rentals; HB 1247 creates a minimum property tax fee; and SB 342 revisits tax increment financing.

On the local tax front, HB 1129 keeps up the ongoing work on local option income (LOIT) taxes while HB 1096 grants broad authority to locals to adopt food and beverage taxes.

Interestingly, and unnecessarily, HB 1160 seeks a further study of the Tax Court (on top of the review conducted by the Supreme Court just last year.) Tax attorneys will be interested in SB 440 as it gets into some procedural issues.

This is just a small sampling of what has been filed. Once bills involving tax matters begin to make their way through the committees, we will report on those that are of consequence to the business community.

Good Journalism; Broken Congress

I  love reading The New York Times headline stories. I continue to be shocked by the fact that Congress is so dysfunctional. The two came together late last week.

Here’s the first sentence of a Times story from early in the week. "Members of Congress feel mighty proud of themselves this week, mainly because they appear to be avoiding a government shutdown — an outcome taken as an actual accomplishment in this turbulent and acrimonious legislature." (Which is exactly what happened early Saturday with a stopgap budget measure to fund day-to-day government through late March 2013).

Other gems from this Times article:

  • The 112th Congress is set to enter the Congressional record books as the least productive body in a generation, passing a mere 173 public laws as of last month. That was well below the 906 enacted from January 1947 through December 1948 by the body President Harry S. Truman referred to as the “do-nothing” Congress, and far fewer than even a single session of many prior Congresses.
  • Appropriations bills, once the central function of the legislative branch, have been ditched in favor of short-term spending measures that do little more than keep the lights on.
  • After the election, when the makeup of the White House and the next Congress are known, there will be a lame-duck session during which myriad tax issues will be tackled, or, somehow punted into the next year.

Saxby Chambliss, a Republican senator from Georgia, sums up the situation. "There has been way too much politics injected into the work that is going on in the Senate. We’ve been spinning our wheels all year."

And that, while true, is simply unbelievable. 

Chamber Still Targeting Job Killers

At the beginning of the 2009 Indiana legislative session, we outlined 40 bills that we targeted as "job killers." Our legislative goal was to squash those bills, keep them from passing and not allow them to negatively impact the state. After all, times are tough enough for the business community and for taxpayers. 

So as the second half of the session gets underway, we’re happy to report that 33 of those bills are now dead or their impact mitigated, with just seven job killers left on our radar. Those include:

  • HB 1014: Expansion of age discrimination litigation to small employers
  • HB 1057: Collective bargaining for public employees
  • HB 1167: Expanded lawsuit actions against employers based upon alleged exposure to hazardous substances
  • HB 1207: Required nutritional information at food establishments
  • HB 1338: Limitations on effectiveness of IEDC business/job creation incentives
  • HB 1461: Collective bargaining for school employees
  • HB 1492: Increased costs for lawsuits against IDEM

The work will continue, with a hoped-for focus on job creation.