[Vision2020] Homeless Shelter Tax Break Rejected

[Tom Hansen]

Denying tax breaks to homeless shelters while ensuring that tax breaks
remain intact for corporate Idaho.

Ya gotta give it to Idaho.  During tough economic times, they have found
yet another way to punish the downtrodden while rewarding the rich.

You go, Butch!

Courtesy of today's (February 17, 2010) Spokesman-Review.

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Homeless shelter tax break rejected
Exemption would have cost $15,000 a year
Betsy Z. Russell, The Spokesman-Review

BOISE – A temporary tax break for homeless shelters that had unanimously
passed the Idaho House went down to unanimous defeat in a Senate committee
Tuesday, as the debate over how to deal with Idaho’s myriad tax exemptions
intensified.

Idaho’s exemptions and exclusions from its state sales tax – including the
exclusion of services from the tax – exceed the amount the tax collects.
But numerous efforts over the past decade to review and repeal existing
exemptions have fallen short amid opposition from the businesses and
groups that get the breaks.

“I appreciate the good work of these and other groups,” said state Sen.
Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston. “The problem is that this conflicts with some
very fundamental challenges in my opinion that Idaho has, and that
basically is a lack of a clear policy direction on how we hand out the
favors of state government – this is the power of government to tax or not
tax.”

State Rep. Branden Durst, D-Boise, told the senators his exemption was
different from existing tax breaks: It’s temporary, just for two years; it
targets a specific need, as homeless shelters are overflowing due to the
economic downturn; and it’d save the state money to have the shelters help
more people with the money they would save from not paying sales tax for
two years.

His pitch won strong favor earlier in the House, which unanimously passed
the bill, HB 435.

Senate Tax Chairman Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, said, “Ultimately, it’s just
not the desire of the committee to continue to expand sales tax exemptions
until or unless we’re willing to look at the whole group of them, and try
to come up with some criteria for determining who should get the
exemptions and who should not – rather than just who gets the favors and
who doesn’t.”

Durst’s bill would have cost the state $15,000 a year for two years. Five
nonprofit homeless shelters around the state, including one in Bonner
County, would have qualified for the exemption.

The Senate committee’s vote came just hours after Congressman Walt Minnick
had addressed the Senate and House and urged the appointment of a
bipartisan commission to review the state’s sales tax structure, with a
“straight-up, yes-or-no vote in the next Legislature” on the panel’s
solutions.

“I think that’s something worth looking at,” Hill said.

The Senate panel’s rejection of Durst’s bill also came less than an hour
after it backed introduction of a bill proposed by Sen. Chuck Winder,
R-Boise, to require the Legislature to review all sales tax exemptions at
least once every five years, and to make any new ones enacted after July 1
expire after five years unless specifically extended.

That came on the heels of two similar measures already introduced: HB 396,
from Rep. Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, would set up a commission to review all
existing sales tax exemptions at least every eight years; and SB 1277, a
bill sponsored by seven Senate Democrats, would make all state tax
exemptions, credits and deductions expire on Jan. 1, 2012, unless
specifically extended by state law, and would require all new exemptions
to expire in five years.

Stegner, however, noted that such attempts in the past have failed. “There
is, in my opinion, a significant barrier to try to do that in that manner,
because you have a tremendous amount of pressure from the people that
enjoy the exemption, and no offsetting opinion particularly from the rest
of the state,” Stegner said.

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Stegner?

Now, where have I heard that name before?

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown