Quick Hits in State News: The Perils of Tax Credits, Breaks and Incentives

A Los Angeles Times report out of Hawaii illustrates why all tax breaks need to be subjected to more scrutiny.  The state’s well-intentioned and wildly popular tax “incentive” for solar energy has gotten more than a little out of control, skyrocketing in cost from $34.7 million in 2010 to $173.8 million in revenues this year, and even jeopardizing the reliability of the state’s power grid. Tax authorities have responded by slicing the credit in half for now.  Had Hawaii implemented some of the tax break accountability reforms we’ve recommended before, (first among them establishing measurable outcomes!), they could have prevented some of this chaos.

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard is encouraging Congress to take action on a national Amazon tax policy because he worries about the impact that exempting online sales from his state’s tax base has on tax fairness and revenues. In the wake of a record settling Cyber Monday he points out that the “gift-buying binge also likely broke another record: most purchases made in South Dakota without paying sales tax.” For more on taxing Internet sales see this Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) brief (PDF).

The Illinois Senate deserves kudos for passing legislation that would require publicly traded corporations to disclose their Illinois income tax bill.  Currently about two-thirds of the companies doing business in Illinois aren’t paying state income taxes. If the bill passes the House and is signed into law by Governor Quinn, important, never-before-known information will be available about corporate taxpayers.  House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie said, “Public policymakers can’t make good public policy if they don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know whether those 66 percent of corporations that pay no income tax in fact don’t have any profits.”

In case you missed it — Good Jobs First and the Iowa Policy Project recently collaborated to release this must read report, Selling Snake Oil to the States, which debunks the tax and regulatory recommendations made by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for building economic growth in the states. Here’s a sneak peak of the study’s findings: “the states ALEC rates best turn out to have actually done the worst.”

Michigan House members will likely approve a proposal in the next week to repeal the tax businesses pay on industrial and commercial personal property (equipment, furniture and other items used for business purposes). Idaho lawmakers are considering a similar proposal.  An editorial in the Battle Creek (MI) Enquirer, however, urges lawmakers to put the plan on hold until there is a “better understanding of the impact on local units of government, along with a plan to mitigate that impact.”  Indeed, the overwhelming majority of revenue generated by this tax helps to fund  local governments, and it would be difficult for localities to absorb a cut that severe.