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Governor’s tax committee establishes sub-committees

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Governor’s Committee for Fair, Simple and Low Taxes continued their work, moving forward in their mission to review Missouri’s taxes.

Thursday afternoon’s meeting saw the committee officially set the three sub-committees and assign members to the respective committees, though roughly half of the committee was only able to attend by phone. (Rehder, Hegeman, Crowell, Lamping, Haahr, and Kraus attended via conference call.)

Former Sen. Jason Crowell, Sen. Andrew Koenig, Sen. Dan Hegeman and Rep. Holly Rehder will task the first subcommittee, which will look into tax credits and incentives.

Former Sen. John Lamping, Sen. Koenig, and Rep. Jay Barnes will work on sale and consumption tax policies, while Will Scharf, Sen. Will Kraus, and Rep. Elijah Haahr will look into the income tax policies.

The subcommittees’ job will be to dig into the current incentives and evaluate how they are working for the state. Chairman Joel Walters says he wants the committees to look into how Missouri compares to other states, while also looking at how the top states handle everything in order to see what best works. He emphasized a need to look into the immediate steps Missouri can take, as well as the longterm road map to success.

Lamping made a point that, since the committee was talking about the structure of the code, that a better route would be finding best process or code, taking a revenue neutral view. Barnes agreed, saying they need to think broader and not get “siloed into sub committees”, but rather look at how they all fit together.

Chairman Walters also proposed a timeline to accomplish their goals, asking for written comments to be submitted by April 28 and completed town halls and testimony received by June 2.

The committee has a deadline of June 30.

Rep. Barnes suggested they provide some direction to the public in regards to written comments in order to get the type of comments they are looking for.

Vice Chairman Scharf said his proposal made sense and offered to draft up the language on topics they are seeking input on, to which the committee agreed.

Walters also suggested the committee invite academics and experts to talk about what they see as working in other places, asking that the committee sends their suggestions to him.

Having established the sub-committees, they entered into closed session. Walters said that nothing had been voted on during the session before adjourning for the day.