Senate "Hoghouses" Tax Reform Bill

HB 1158 started as the the Flat Tax plan governor Burgum and Republican leadership started promoting last fall. The Senate Appropriations Committee has taken it upon themselves to upend that plan.

It appears in the last 10 days, something has drastically changed since Senator Majority Leader David Hogue went on TV and said that the Senate would end up with a hybrid property tax and income tax plan that included some form of a Flat Income Tax.

Senate Leader: Hybrid Of Flat Tax And Property Tax Buy-Downs Likely

The latest version of HB 1158 just passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee has scrapped the Flat Tax in favor of simply reducing the bottom tax bracket to 0% and leaving the remaining four brackets as they are today.

The rest of the bill expands the Homestead Tax Credit for senior citizens and continues the long-standing but failed approach of trying to buy-down local property taxes with more state spending - without ensuring that those savings will be lost to valuation increases and backfilling by local governments.

If the bill is passed in this form, it will still have to go to a conference committee.

And the House is still sitting on the original Senate property tax buy-down bill, so they too could play games.

It is pretty clea…