However, Amendment 4 on Nov. ballot will provide important protection for Missouri businesses and families.
3 Priority Small Biz Bills Not Enacted After Veto Session
The Missouri Legislature overrode 13
of Gov. Jay Nixon’s vetoes during Veto Session last month, The Washington
Times reported, but
three priority bills for NFIB/MO were not among them.
In addition to sustaining vetoes for
the expert witness qualifications (SB591) and collateral source rule (SB847)
bills, lawmakers failed to enact the Big Government Get Off My Back Act, which
became controversial because of an amendment unrelated to the original text of
the bill.
The small business incentive
measure, HB1870, would have extended the provisions of the Big Government Get
Off My Back Act, which originated in 2009 and expired in 2014. Under HB 1870,
the state would not have been able to impose any user fees on small businesses
with 50 or fewer employees, and small businesses would have received an income
tax deduction for each new employee they hired and paid at least the county
average wage. Businesses would have received a $10,000 deduction for each new
full-time job or $20,000 if the full-time job comes with a health insurance
benefit and 50 percent of the premium covered by the business. The bill would
have gone into effect Aug. 28, 2016, and expired Dec. 31, 2020.
An amendment added later, however,
would have allowed for an exception to the requirement that businesses use the
federal E-Verify program to determine whether job applicants are authorized to
work in the U.S.
LOOKING FORWARD: While the veto of
all three bills is disappointing, there is a measure that will appear on the
November ballot that will be of great benefit to Missouri small businesses.
Amendment 4 would preemptively ban sales taxes on services, an idea that has
been proposed in the last seven Missouri legislative sessions and that would be
tremendously harmful to both businesses and Missouri families.
NFIB/MO supports the passage of
Amendment 4. To learn more, visit http://motaxpayerprotection.com/.
