After months of negotiations and counter proposals, Brewer’s office, legislators and the League of Arizona Cities and Towns appear to have settled on a compromise for simplifying the state’s transaction privilege tax system, Yellow Sheet Report says this afternoon
Rep. Steve Farley told the Yellow Sheet (YS) supporters of Brewer’s TPT overhaul legislation and the league settled on a final compromise, which Sen. Steve Yarbrough will presumably offer as an amendment on the floor soon. Just a few hours earlier, the fate of the TPT bill, H2111 (investments; public monies) was unclear.
“The prime contracting [provision] right now is probably one of the least of our concerns,” Ken Strobeck, the league’s executive director, said minutes before news broke that the two sides had reached a compromise. Strobeck said the league wanted assurances from the Dept of Revenue (DOR) it would collect the same level of data self-collecting cities now gather from businesses.
They use the information to plan their budget and prioritize programs, he said. Additionally, the league wants DOR to come up with criteria for deciding when to reject a city-requested audit of a business and want city auditors to be a part of a DOR-led team when auditing multi-jurisdictional businesses.
“It’s important [since] we have issues that come with businesses in our cities and we don’t want to be shut out,” Strobeck said.
Mesa Mayor Scott Smith said he and many others were all for fixing things that are broken, but he had lamented the issue of simplification got “off track.” “We’ve always supported the primary goals of single pay, single license, single report. [It seems] we’ve come full circle and getting back to some mechanism that accomplishes the broader goals and in a way that doesn’t create more difficulties for cities and doesn’t harm cities, and I think we’re getting there,” he told YS.
