UPDATE: Tax credit review panel will meet, but after legal deadline to do so
By Jim Small | Arizona Mirror
A legislative panel meant to annually scrutinize income tax credits and determine whether they are working as intended might meet this week for the first time since 2015.
The Joint Legislative Income Tax Credit Review Committee was created in 2002 to examine tax credits by looking at why they were created, whether they provide a benefit to the state and recommend to the full legislature whether they ought to be changed or scrapped altogether. Those recommendations are required to be made by Dec. 15 each year.
The bipartisan panel was designed to be filled by five members of both the House Ways and Means and the Senate Finance committees – the legislative committees that oversee changes to the state’s tax code.
There are 54 tax credits on the books, and each is required to be reviewed at least once every five years on a rotating schedule.
But Republican leaders of the state Senate and House of Representatives haven’t bothered to fill the review panel’s seats since 2017, and the committee hasn’t met since December 2015. But even at that meeting, the panel didn’t do its job: Instead of reviewing three tax credits scheduled for oversight, it punted the reviews to 2020, according to the minutes of the meeting.
