FRANKFORT- an amended tax reform clean up bill made it out of a senate committee.
House Bill 354 passed out of committee but with lawmakers reserving the right to vote no on the floor.
The Senate committee substitute made a couple changes to the version that passed out of the House last week.
To begin with, it changes the way charity admissions are handled—making them all tax exempt same with sales from charitable events like auctions and all non-profits.
But—things like a bookstore run by a non-profit will be subject to tax.
No sales tax will be collected on services for anyone who collects under $10,000 a year. This is someone like a child who mows lawns during the summer for extra cash.
Another major change is taking out gambling losses which were unintentionally included in last years House Bill 487.
Prior to the bill--gambling like horse racing was only taxed on the net-not the gross. Lawmakers fear if this is not reversed, people will look to other states.
"The biggest concern is there is a tremendous impact that both the at track and online gaming as it relates to the commonwealth will take a tremendous hit because people have so many options for gaming you don't have to be physically present and this will become a very unattractive place for horse racing and other activities in very short order," said Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Taylor Mill.
This will have an impact of about $2.2 million but it's money the commonwealth never saw before.
As far as the whole fiscal note attached to the committee substitute, Sen. McDaniel says that hasn't been figured out yet.
"The fiscal note came back indeterminable, for many reasons. In large measure the not for profits, we cleaned up issues that were not just related to 487 but there were also issues that were created by the Supreme Court ruling last spring in issues related to how people had or hadn't been complying, and how revenue had or hadn't been enforcing for various non-profits," he said. "Ultimately, the fiscal note came back as indeterminable on it."
Some members expressed concerns over not including a change to way the pension earnings are taxed.
Last year's bill lowered the amount of earnings that could be taxed from $41,000 to $31,000.
They said they want to see that threshold back at $41,000. But McDaniel says they were only focusing on cleaning up unintended consequences from last year's bill.
"That was part of the discussion. We really tried to clean up things that were unintended consequences," he said. "There are things that we may have liked to address as well, but we felt that for the purposes of this particular bill that we were consistent that we were addressing unintended consequences or secondary effects of the bill from last year."