By Rep. Paul Anderson
Even though the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a Tax Repeal bill last week, it still takes action by the Senate to move it along on its way to Gov. Dayton for his signature. At the time of this writing, there is no definite word on when the other chamber was going to take up the repeal legislation.
Those who have paid sales tax on the labor portion of commercial equipment repairs (including farmers) would be in line for retroactive refunds if language contained in the House bill is carried through. The tax went into effect last July so any sales tax paid on repairs would be eligible for the refund. Hang on to those repair bill receipts, but again, those checks aren’t in the mail just yet. Also contained in the House bill that passed 126-2 was language to repeal the tax on commercial warehousing, which was set to take effect in April.
The $504 million contained in the repeal bill represents about one-fourth of the $2 billion tax increase passed last year by the DFL-controlled Legislature. A campaign aptly named “Give It Back,” has been started by Republicans to promote the idea of not spending the entire surplus that’s expected in state coffers at the end of the current biennium in July of 2015. If the tax repeal package eventually agreed on with the Senate and the governor is in the same neighborhood as the current House bill, about half of the projected surplus would remain.
The wrangling has already started about what to do with the extra money. It’s an interesting problem to have, and I haven’t been a part of these kinds of discussions during my five years in the legislature. We faced a multi-billion dollar shortfall just three years ago when tough decisions were made to balance the budget without raising taxes. Today, rolling back taxes that make Minnesota uncompetitive with our neighboring states should be the top priority.
Some will undoubtedly go to enhance our reserve funds, and some will be used for other purposes such as the increased funding for fuel assistance. That’s good, but the main focus should be on returning most of that surplus to the people whose taxes built it up in the first place.
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A bill (H.F. 84) that creates licensing requirements for commercial sized dog- and cat-breeding facilities was passed out of the House Agriculture Policy Committee last week. Legislation that sought to regulate so-called “Puppy Mills” has been around for years, but this is the first time the bill seems to have a chance of passage. Various stakeholder groups met in the interim, and they apparently have come up with a bill that all can live with. There was no opposition from any of the ag groups, whereas in the past there had been concern that these types of bills would lead to increased regulation of farm animals.
This bill pertains only to dogs and cats, and it would require licenses for facilities that had ten or more breeding animals and produced at least five litters a year. Several minor language changes are expected as the bill works through the committee process. One concern I have is that new federal regulations in this area have just been formulated, so I hope we aren’t going to have duplicate state and federal inspections of these facilities.
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