Omnibus tax bill ready for House Floor

With only minor tweaks to the fiscal output, the omnibus taxes conference committee adopted its report to HF4*/SF2255 Tuesday morning along party lines.

It took the committee less than 30 minutes to move the nearly $1.13 billion bill to the House Floor. Sponsored by Rep. Greg Davids (R-Preston) and Sen. Roger Chamberlain (R-Lino Lakes) the bill when last considered by the committee sat at $1.31 billion.

Davids said changes largely reflect more accurate fiscal calculations on various provisions, but that $20 million over the next two biennia was added for the Department of Revenue to administer the bill.

Gov. Mark Dayton has criticized the bill, saying tax relief would come at the expense of other parts of the budget. After the meeting, Davids said that if the governor does not sign the bill, “it puts a lot of Minnesotans at a great disadvantage.”

Davids noted that the state’s estimated $1.65 billion surplus comes on the backs of state taxpayers. “We have overcharged the taxpayers $1.35 billion, and anytime I’ve been overcharged by a company they pay me back. We need to get this money out to the people who sent it in.”

Now in his second consecutive term as chair of the House Taxes Committee, Davids has not had a major tax bill signed by the governor. He said this time around the governor did not want to engage with the numbers, “and we’re trying to get this thing moving.”

Without a budget agreement in totality, he said the tax committee had to “move forward with the cards we’re dealt. … Our job is to receive a number and put the best tax bill together we can.”