JOB TRAINING TAX REPEALED—Arizona Senate Bill 1471, the state’s fiscal year 2015-2016 budget reconciliation bill on revenue, passed the Arizona Legislature and will soon be signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey. Among other changes to the state’s tax code, the legislation repeals Arizona’s 0.1 percent surcharge on state unemployment insurance taxes effective January 1, 2016. The $7 per employee tax on private sector, for-profit enterprises collects approximately $13 million annually for a fund dedicated to job training. The job training fund had prior to this session accumulated a positive balance of more than $50 million due in large part to small businesses’ inability to qualify for or see sufficient value in seeking grants.
CONTRACTOR TPT/SALES TAX FIX SIGNED INTO LAW—Emergency legislation to correct serious conflicts in the recently enacted simplification of the state’s byzantine transaction privilege tax system was one of the first bills to land on Ducey’s desk. Fundamentally new tax provisions dealing with which side of a construction transaction would be responsible to pay and/or collect the tax were set to become effective on January 1, 2015. However, the unexpected difficulty in implementing the law coupled with a few downright mistakes in the original 2013 reform legislation resulted in the need for quick work on fix in the form of SB 1446. The legislation repaired the systemic issues and clarified many key definitions at the heart of the inability of the construction industry to comply with the law. Without passage of SB 1446, these small businesses would have been wide open to audits and heavy penalties and interest payments.
REGULATORY REFORM BILLS SET TO CLOSE OUT SESSION WITH A BANG—A series of important and far-reaching regulatory reform measures are moving through the legislative process toward the desk of Ducey. With these bills, NFIB is working hard to fulfill Ducey’s call during his State of the State Address to make Arizona “the best place in America to work and do business.”
Farrell Quinlan
NFIB/Arizona state director
