The Shumlin administration’s miscellaneous tax proposal — a mix of substantive and technical tax policy changes — would remove a sales tax on cloud computing use by businesses. The draft legislation also fleshes out the adminstration’s much-discussed plans to tax break-open tickets and cut the state’s earned income tax credit.
Last year, the Shumlin administration backed a retroactive cloud computing moratorium that reimbursed businesses for about $2 million in taxes that had already been collected. This time, the proposal would make the exemption permanent.
The dense 36-page bill includes a broad provision (buried in the fine print on page 34) suggesting that an exemption on cloud computing be added to the state’s 49 other sales tax exceptions.
House Ways and Means chair Janet Ancel, D-Calais, says it’s not prudent for the state to extend a permanent exemption to cloud-based software companies at a time when tax revenues are tight.
“There really needs to be a compelling reason to create a new exemption,” Ancel said. “I haven’t been convinced that a compelling reason is there.”
The Education Fund would suffer as a result of additional exemptions to the sales tax, she said, 35 percent of which is funneled toward state’s K-12 public education programs.
Tom Kavet, the legislature’s economist, has estimated the $2 million the state opted not to collect last year would likely grow in future years as the economy continues shifts toward more online services like cloud computing.
A study committee voted 4-3 late last year to recommend the permanent exemption proposal.
Tax commissioner Mary Peterson said that the Shumlin administration is pushing for a cloud computing tax exemption for two reasons.
“From the governor’s perspective, it’s a matter of economic development,” Peterson said. “This is a new area we want to be encouraging Vermont businesses in. And from my perspective, just in terms of tax administration, it’s such a new area that is constantly evolving. It’s really difficult to adminster a tax on something that’s evolving so rapidly.”
The proposal promises to revive a controversy from last year, after businesses first received, and then successfully suspended, a retroactive tax imposed by an administrative tax bulletin from the tax department.
In Ancel’s view, the administration has exaggerated the impact of an exemption on the retention and attraction of tech businesses in Vermont. “This exemption exempts the consumers of cloud computing, not the developers,” she said. “It’s kind of a stretch to say that the exemption will make or break a business in this state.”
A majority of the Ways and Means committee has to approve the miscellaneous tax plan before it can move forward. The committee will likely divide the technical sections of the bill from the more substantive provisions of the comprehensive proposal into two bills, as it has done in previous years.
Not much testimony is scheduled on the cloud computing issue, since all but one committee member heard extensive testimony about cloud computing last year when the issue ignited the Statehouse.
Other notable items in the administration’s plan include specific wording on break-open tax tickets, which may raise anywhere from $6.5 million to $17 million, and a reduction of the state’s EITC from 32 percent to 11 percent of its federal counterpart.
The sale of individual break-open tickets would be tracked under this proposal, rather than the number of boxes, under this proposal. Currently there’s no data on how many single tickets are sold: Critics say the tax won’t raise the promised $17 million, or roughly 10 percent of sales, because Vermonters don’t buy enough tickets.
The General, Housing and Military Affairs committee will tackle the initial work on break-open tickets, Ancel said, and House Human Services will handle the EITC issue, before Ways and Means takes up the proposals again.