Dear Neighbors,
It has been an especially busy session, and I wanted to take a moment to update you on some of the issues I’ve been working on at the legislature.
Tax Cuts for Minnesotans
The House began the first week of session this year by passing a repeal bill to end unnecessary warehousing and business-to-business sales taxes. As a co-chair of the Small Business Caucus in the House, I worked with several other members of both parties to make sure that telecommunications equipment taxes, machinery repair sales taxes, and warehousing taxes were repealed this session. I was the chief author of the bill to repeal telecommunications equipment taxes (HF 2180) and a co-author of many other business tax repeal bills in this legislation.
We also passed federal conformity as part of that tax repeal bill. Conforming Minnesota’s tax code to federal tax law makes tax filing easier for Minnesotans and qualified over 1 million residents of our state for $225 million in increased tax relief. On Friday, we were finally able to act on the complete amended tax cut package that was sent to us by the Senate. We passed the bill the same day with bipartisan support to cut taxes by $430 million and sent it to Governor Dayton for signing.
Important Tax Filing Information
Because this tax relief package was passed before April 15th, the Minnesota Department of Revenue is working hard to make these tax cuts available to Minnesotans who have not yet filed their 2013 tax returns. The Department of Revenue will update all of their internal and online systems by April 3, 2014. They will also be working closely with online vendors who process returns to make sure that their software is updated to correctly process returns for potentially increased tax refunds.
If you have not yet filed your 2013 taxes, you should wait until after April 3, 2014 to do so.
If you have already filed your 2013 taxes, you don’t need to do anything currently.
If you have questions or concerns about this process or any tax changes please contact me at 651-296-7803 or rep.paul.rosenthal@house.mn
Sincerely,
Paul Rosenthal
State Representative