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For months, Idaho lawmakers have been seriously considering repealing the personal property tax on business equipment. If enacted, repeal would cost local governments and public schools over $140 million a year, and would likely force cuts in public services and increases in property taxes on other taxpayers.
The single biggest winner under repeal would be Idaho Power, held by IDACorp, which will reportedly see its taxes fall by $10.5 to $15.3 million per year if repeal is enacted. A new report from our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), helps put this costly tax proposal into perspective by looking at the state income taxes being paid (or not) by the plan’s largest beneficiary.
According to IDACorp’s financial disclosures, the company earned $623 million in U.S. profits over the last five years (2007-11) but paid nothing in state income taxes to the states in which it operates. In fact, the company’s effective state income tax rate across all states was actually negative. IDACorp received $7 million in tax rebates from the states between 2007 and 2011, giving it an effective tax rate of negative 1.1 percent for the five year period as a whole.
The proposed repeal of the personal property tax in Idaho would leave the state corporate income tax as the main means by which companies like IDACorp contribute to the public investments that allow them to do business and generate profits. Before lawmakers take such a step, they should at least know whether the state corporate tax is working to begin with. In Idaho and virtually every other state, however, neither elected officials nor the tax-paying public have access to this kind of information. Obviously, they should (PDF).