Tech Talk: Scoring the Votes, Tallying Your Benefits

It seems so long ago that an up-and-down software-as-a-service legislative journey ended successfully with passage of now Senate Enrolled Act 257. The bottom line: Indiana put a definitive stake in the ground, becoming just the fourth state to clearly establish that it will not tax such SaaS transactions. (Summary on Page 2 here).

But with the 2018 Indiana General Assembly not wrapping up its work until a one-day special session in mid-May, an evaluation of the legislators’ work and a review of how members benefitted from Indiana Chamber advocacy have just recently been released.

The 2018 Legislative Vote Analysis, as the name suggests, grades lawmakers on their support for pro-economy, pro-jobs initiatives. Scores for 2018 range from 47% to 100%. Two Chamber priorities, however, are not included in the analysis as they did not advance to the floor for full votes due to leadership decisions. Those were efforts to raise the smoking age to 21 and reform the state’s smallest townships.

Indiana Chamber President Kevin Brinegar notes, “For this exercise, it means that two critical pieces of legislation never came into play, so ‘tough votes’ weren’t taken and overall vote scores are higher as a result.”

View the full report or one-page summary of legislator scores.

Overall, the Chamber’s advocacy work resulted in savings for Indiana employers of $615 million – or $228 per employee. Major efforts included the following:

  • Tax savings, most significantly avoiding direct tax increases due to conformity with federal tax reform, and the SaaS sales tax exemption
  • Defeat of a variety of labor and insurance mandates

What do the Chamber efforts mean for your organization? If you have 10 employees, it’s $2,280; for 25 employees, $5,700; or 100 employees, $22,800.

View the 2018 Legislative Return on Investment.