NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — According to Dan Murray with the Kansas NFIB, now that legislative leadership and the Governor potentially have a deal on taxes, the special session could go quickly.
"They do plan to come in on Monday," Murray said. "The special session starts on Tuesday. They had indicated all along that they were going to come in only for a day. This certainly makes it more clear that that's probably a more likely possibility, but it does many of the same things that previous plans have done outside of including property tax relief, which certainly we had championed and others had as well."
Still there is significant income tax relief in the bill.
"It takes our tax code from three tiers to two tiers, reduces those rates slightly to 5.2% and 5.58%," Murray said. "If you're filing as a single filer and you make below $23,000 or jointly $46,000, your rate will be zero, and then it increases slightly the standard deductions. Again, those were included in previous versions of tax relief, and provides for personal exemptions for couples filing jointly. That'd be around $18,000 and for single filers around $9,000.
There's also some help for seniors in this version.
"Then, many have wanted to see in tax relief this year, the elimination of Social Security or the income tax on Social Security benefits for seniors," It does not include any, again, any property tax relief, and it doesn't include any speeding up of the elimination of the food sales tax because that's set to eliminate at the end of the year anyway."
The process of debating the bill will work a little differently, too.
"They're doing an informational hearing without a bill number on the tax bill on Monday, that, we anticipate being Monday afternoon," Murray said. "What they'll do is come to early morning on Tuesday and introduce the bill directly on the floor in both the House and Senate, and they'll debate it on the House and Senate floor, much like they would in the committee process, so essentially,they bypass the committee process in terms of allowing the committees to mark it up and advance it to the to the full Senate and or House."
If leadership can keep their caucuses in line, this could get done in a day or less.
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