State lawmakers are moving to give businesses another chance to try to lower their taxes.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted unanimously late Thursday to put a question on the 2014 ballot to expand a partial exemption that businesses now have. The measure now goes to the full House.
Businesses pay property taxes annually not only on the value of their land and buildings but, unlike homeowners, also on the worth of every piece of equipment they own and use.
Voters have previously allowed businesses to exempt the first $50,000 in equipment. With inflation, that has now risen to more than $68,000.
HCR 2011 would boost that exemption sharply using a formula tied to median earnings in the state. Farrell Quinlan, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, figures the formula would let companies have up to $2.4 million of their equipment untaxed.
But even if it eventually gets legislative approval, one key hurdle would remain: voter ratification. And an identical measure on last year's ballot was rejected by a 12-point margin.
Quinlan blamed the failure in 2012 on lack of money.
Final campaign finance reports showed just $56,903 spent statewide to support that measure, on the ballot as Proposition 116, with most of that coming from NFIB. Supporters did not spend more, as there was no organized opposition and the concept, both then and now, has had bipartisan legislative support.
"We need to raise some money before we put this back on the ballot,'' he conceded to lawmakers.
Quinlan said that for many businesses, the issue is not just about money.
He said businesses whose property is worth less than the exemption do not have to bother computing what their equipment is worth, factoring in depreciation and all that, much less write out a check every year. Quinlan said figures that would remove the burden from about 93 percent of all firms in the state.
downtownresident posted at 12:40 pm on Sun, Feb 24, 2013.
What's wrong with this picture? "Quinlan blamed the failure in 2012 on lack of money."
The failure was not blamed on lack of merit, just that there wasn't enough money to buy the required number of votes.
PAHaysAZ posted at 7:41 am on Mon, Feb 25, 2013.
Just a suggestion - so cut the taxes already!
samkat posted at 5:35 pm on Mon, Feb 25, 2013.
Why not cut the number of tax exemptions? We have far too many special interest tax loopholes already. Remove them and take away the personal exemptions and I imagine we could actually end up with a windfall of tax revenues.
Leon Ceniceros posted at 7:32 am on Tue, Feb 26, 2013.
Well, enough of the "three stooges".....Governor Jan Brewer and thank Gawd, a Republican Legislature have brought in tens of thousands of new jobs into Arizona.
Corporations, companies and small businesses are flocking to "business friendly" Arizona. Yes, we still have the "three C's; copper, cotton and citrus" but we also have solar energy, trucking and aircraft and helicopter manufacturing too.
What the "three stooges" and other Liberals, Marxists, Socialists, Anarchists, Obama's Occupy Wall Street rioters, Commie Wanna-Be's and other assorted Democrats don't realize is that with "business friendly" tax regulations that....no jobs will be created = no houses will be purchased by employees = to income tax revenue/
Arizona has to create jobs the old-fashioned way = a business friendly tax and regulation environment.