Special Tax Committee Advances Windfall Bill

A special committee created and chaired by Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle has advanced a bill to change the Kansas tax code to allow for individuals to itemize even if they don’t do so on their federal return and also to roll back a tax on repatriated foreign income and Global Intangible Low-taxed Income.

Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Federal Tax Code Implementation expressed concerns about not being able to reliably estimate what the windfall is worth. The Kansas Department of Revenue was using a portion of a federal estimate to get to its numbers.

“I think you guys have probably flipped two or three times on what this was going to cost,” said Senator Tom Holland of Baldwin City. “It’s tough. I might as well shake my Magic Eight-Ball and ask what the cost of it’s going to be, you know, because, on a lot of this, we just don’t know.”

Senate President Wagle is concerned about cost, too, but in a different way.

“I wish we could have a fiscal note on what would happen if we didn’t pass this bill and our international companies in Kansas City, Kansas, like Garmin and Seaboard and GM and Ford and numerous other companies, Apple, Walmart, they all decide to move a few miles east over to Missouri, which has been a huge problem.”

Almost all tax bills end up with lots of amendments being proposed on the floor for different purposes, so it’s likely that the final legislation could still change. Senator Holland even talked about the idea of splitting the corporate and the personal portions of the bill from each other and discussing changes in the standard deduction.

It will be a lengthy debate, no doubt, when the bill comes to the floor. There is no word yet when that might be.