Thanks to the strong leadership of Senator Andrew Koenig (R-St. Louis County), some very important groundwork laid by Senator Bill Eigel (R-St. Charles County), and the hard work of AIM contract lobbyist Chuck Pierce, the Missouri Senate gave first-round approval today to a tax bill that has only three components:
1. The base bill that defined “revenue” for the purposes of determining when individual income tax rates should be reduced under the bill we passed several years ago over former Governor Jay Nixon’s veto; 2. A dramatically lower corporation income tax rate effective for tax years beginning on or after 1/1/2019 of 3.5%; and, 3. A limitation of apportionment formula to Missouri’s single sales factor apportionment. Importantly, the language does not contain the “throwback” or “throwout” language contained in other tax reform bills, such as HB 2540.
This bill is nearly revenue neutral because it uses increased revenue from the change in apportionment formula to lower the corporation income rate for all C corporations.
Sen. Koenig was key in getting this done and we thank him and his staff, particularly Tom Estes, for this victory. The bill will move to the House for further consideration during these last 5 weeks of the 2018 Legislative Session.
Another tax reform bill with many more pieces is SB 617. That bill received initial approval a couple of weeks ago. Sen. Eigel is the handler of that legislation and he met with business leaders assembled by AIM this week, agreeing to remove the parts of the bill we found objectionable and replace them with others that were more favorable to business, provided he is able to generate enough support in the Senate to pass the bill. We greatly appreciate his leadership on that bill and will work to move his bill forward, although the 400+ pages of Streamlined Sales Tax provisions in the bill make it very difficult to accurately assess the impact. While we work with Sen. Eigel on this larger package, we are very pleased the Senate decided to advance Sen. Koenig’s bill on a 28-3 vote and we will work hard to pass it to through the House.
AIM president and CEO Ray McCarty thanked the hard working AIM lobbyists for this victory. AIM’s contract tax lobbyist, Chuck Pierce, and another very important AIM contract lobbyist, Trent Watson, were the key to this important victory.
“Chuck Pierce, Trent Watson and Dave Overfelt, do a great job representing AIM in the Capitol,” said McCarty. “These guys work hard every day to improve the business environment on behalf of the members of Associated Industries of Missouri.”
We will keep you posted as the various bills progress through the remaining weeks of the legislative session. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT OF ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES OF MISSOURI! Without you, we could not do this great work.
HERE IS A LINK WITH INFO ON THE BILL: General bill page for SS#2 SB 674 with summary
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