Politics

Missouri Requires Tax Credit Disclosure

About six weeks ago, I mocked the Missouri legislature for enriching themselves with tax credits but not requiring any sort of public disclosure of the credits. HB 2058 was enacted during the session to cure some of the ills of the system.

– deems a taxpayer eligible for any state tax credit program even if a conflict of interest exists due to a relationship of any degree or affinity to any statewide elected official or member of the General Assembly, when the related person holds an equity interest of less than 2% in the taxpayer;

– allows a corporation, firm, partnership, trust, association, or other entity to receive state-authorized tax credits, abatements, exemptions, or loans even if a conflict of interest exists due to a relationship of any degree or affinity to any statewide elected official or member of the General Assembly, when the related person holds an equity interest of less than 2% in the entity that will receive the state benefit;

– requires every state agency charged with administering a tax credit program to make public the name of each tax credit recipient and the amount of tax credits issued to each recipient;

– requires any tax credit program applicant who purposely and directly employs unauthorized aliens to forfeit any tax credits issued but not redeemed and to repay all tax credits that have been redeemed during the time the unauthorized alien was employed by the applicant;

– allows information regarding state tax credits claimed by a member of the General Assembly or any statewide elected public official to be disclosed to the public; and

– requires members of the General Assembly and statewide elected public officials to disclose on financial interest statements whether they, their spouses, or dependent children claimed any state tax credits on their most recent state income tax return. 

While this won’t cure everything, it does give some statewide guidelines. Earlier, each credit granting agency (and there are seemingly hundreds buried in the Missouri government) had their own rules. The Executive agencies generally didn’t give tax credits if a public official owned more than 10% of the project. Treasurer Steelman’s office denied tax credits to any project that had any public official’s name as a part owner.

It also requires that Legislators at least disclose the tax credits that they do receive, though I doubt anyone actually reads the financial disclosure forms that Legislators have to file (I certainly don’t). At least it’s one step closer to transparency in the system, as long as the legislators stay in the system.

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5. Hybrid Credit Amounts Issued

© 2008 Kirk Walsh.