What we have been seeing at the Legislature in terms of bills proposing new taxes has been relatively tame.

Until now, that is.

Senate Bill 56, with the ominous title “Relating to Revenue Generation,” has been granted its first hearing by the Senate Ways and Means Committee.  It has officially started its journey through the legislative gauntlet.

Why do I call this bill the Enola Gay?  You might remember from the history books that Enola Gay was the name of the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on the City of Hiroshima in World War II.  Here, of course, the bill’s destination isn’t Japan; it’s the pocketbooks of us the taxpayers. 

Here’s what the payload contains.

There is an income tax hike.  The top income tax rate in the bill is 13% for single filers with more than $250,000 in taxable income, or for couples with more than $500,000 taxable income.  The previous top tax rate was 11%.

The top tax rate on capital gains is hoisted to 11% from 7.25%.

The new tax brackets also are designed to get rid of the effects of low tax brackets on higher income taxpayers.

Corporations, which used to be subject to tax rates of 4.4% to 6.4%, are taxed at a flat rate of 9.6%.

Next, we go to general excise and use tax.  The bill suspends, for two years beginning July 1, 2021, twenty different exemptions that are now allowed under the GET Law and six different exemptions that are now allowed under the Use Tax Law.  This hearkens back to the same exemption suspension that was in effect exactly ten years prior to suspension period now proposed.

And, finally, we have conveyance tax.  The tax rate stays the same for properties sold for $1 million and under but is doubled for those selling for more.  And if the property is a condominium or single-family residence for which the purchaser is ineligible for a county homeowner’s exemption, the tax is increased further; for such properties with a value of $10 million or more, the tax goes from 1% to 2.5%.

The proposed suspension of exemptions lasts two years.  All of the other rate increases proposed are permanent.

The preamble to the bill trying to justify the increases says that we are in a pandemic and state government needs ” to generate revenue to allow the State to meet its strategic goals, avoid furloughs and layoffs for state workers, and prevent disruptions to essential government services.”

Pandemics don’t last forever, however.  These tax increases do.

Another passage in the bill’s preamble recites that “the university of Hawaii economic research organization has found that every $1 in state salary reductions results in a $1.50 decrease in overall economic activity.”

And what then happens with all the jobs outside of the public sector that are rapidly disappearing because businesses big and small can’t make ends meet?  Are those simply ignored in thinking about economic activity?  And I repeat, in the private sector we are not simply talking about salary reductions and furloughs.  Those are happening too, but we are seeing layoffs and business closures.

Lawmakers, are you going to let this Enola Gay drop the bomb on an economy already reeling from the pandemic?  And taxpayers, if you have opinions on the subject that you want your lawmakers to know about, now may be a very good time to let your voices be heard.

We have been railing for some weeks now about the goings-on at our Legislature.  This week we spotlight the Department of Taxation.

On February 16th, the Department published a Tax Information Release, a public statement of interpretation of the law, relating to the TV and movie production industry.  To understand that release, we need to go into a little background first.

When we see Hawaii’s General Excise Tax or GET, it is usually on a sales receipt and the tax shown is 4.712% or 4.166%, depending on the island you are on.  That rate is driven by what we call the retail tax rate, which is applied to sales from a seller to an end user.

The GET also is applied to intermediate stage products and services, namely those that are sold not to an end user but to a retailer, or someone further up the production chain.  For example, consider a farmer selling vegetables to a market, or a fashion designer selling artwork to a manufacturer who will be making aloha shirts with that artwork.  There, the GET is imposed at the “wholesale rate” of 0.5% instead.

When movie and TV productions are made, not all of the people participating in the production are on the payroll.  A few, such as principal cast, the director, and others in key roles like the director of photography, are independent contractors to the production.  Many of them have entities they own, known as “loan-out entities,” which then contract out to the production. 

What, then, is the GET rate that applies when a loan-out entity is paid by the production company?

In 2008, the Department of Taxation published proposed rules containing several key GET interpretations.  In Proposed Admin. Rule sections 18-237-13-01.01(b) and 18-237-13(6)-10(b), which appeared in Tax Information Release 2008-02, the Department said that a production company is in the business of manufacturing, and a loan-out entity providing services to the production company qualified for the 0.5% wholesale rate.  The proposed rules were reproposed in modified form in Tax Information Release 2009-05, but in the same proposed rule sections the Department reaffirmed that the GET interpretations above were still good and could be relied upon by taxpayers.

During the next ten years, the Department decided not to finalize these proposed rules, instead publishing revised temporary rules that only addressed the income tax credit for productions and did not include any GET rules.  After finalizing the rules, the Department published an Announcement in November 2019 ostensibly to summarize the rules that were adopted, but it added a note, seemingly out of right field, saying that a “production company is not considered to be in the business of ‘manufacturing’ [for GET purposes].”

Tax Information Release 2021-01, the interpretation published on February 16, explains that “the Department reviewed its position on deeming a motion picture or television film production company to be engaged in the business of manufacturing.  Through this review, the Department determined that this prior position was inappropriate.”  In other words, the Department changed its mind, and loan-out entities are now taxable at the full retail GET rate.  Neither the Release nor the prior announcement showed any reasoning from the applicable law (which did not change in the meantime) even attempting to justify the Department’s about-face.

“I am altering the deal,” the Department is effectively saying.  “Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

Folks, this is Hawaii, not “The Empire Strikes Back.”  The Department is given authority to make published pronouncements and adopt rules so people know and can plan business activities that follow the law. If the law changes because of legislative action or a court decision, that’s one thing.   Or if the Department made a mistake in coming to its earlier ruling and can explain what the mistake was and why it was wrong, maybe that is okay as well.  But changing the rules in midstream just because someone feels like it sends the message that the Department can act arbitrarily.  We need our government to keep its word, give adequate notice of any material changes, and rein in any Vaderesque action.

At the top of my list of pending legislation this week is the “maintenance of effort” bill, House Bill 611 and Senate Bill 815.  What it says is if the appropriated budget of the Department of Education (DOE) drops from one year to the next, the difference in the appropriations is immediately scooped out of general excise tax collections and plopped into a “public education stabilization trust fund” that the Department of Education can then use “to fund any program in the state budget.” 

And that’s not all.  Another provision of the bill directs that if the state reduces the amount appropriated to DOE, then the amount appropriated will automatically change to “the aggregate proportion of the department’s annual appropriations from the state general funds over the preceding ten years.”

So how would that work?  Let’s say the DOE is budgeted $2 billion this year, fiscal 2022, which constitutes 13.5% of a total state budget of $15.4 billion.  In general funds, it gets $1.7 billion, which is 21% of $8 billion of the total general funds spent.  Let’s suppose that the bill passes and that in fiscal 2023, the DOE is budgeted $1.9 billion, 12.3% of a total budget of $15.5 billion.  Of general funds, DOE gets $1.5 billion, 19.7% of $7.8 billion total.  The provisions in the bill would sequester $100 million from general excise tax collections and put it into the stabilization fund, and it would unbalance the budget by changing the $1.5 billion general fund appropriation to the 10-year average proportion of the total general fund, perhaps 21% of the $7.8 billion or $1.63 billion.  So, DOE would get $130 million more in general funds than budgeted, and another $100 million would be clawed out of the general excise tax collections.  That $230 million would need to come at the expense of something else.  Or a whole bunch of something elses.

Bills like this one illustrate the creativity and the lengths to which proponents of a particular activity are willing to go to avoid the annual appropriation process.

Appropriation is not supposed to be difficult.  Lawmakers, with the help of our Council on Revenues, figure out how much money we’re expected to collect. They listen as the various executive agencies and departments show them what their respective programs have achieved for the people of Hawaii.  Lawmakers then decide which programs and services are worthy of how much of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and off we go for another fiscal year.

This, however, isn’t enough for some people, who are absolutely fixated on securing a “dedicated funding source” for their favorite program or department.  A dedicated funding source usually means setting up a special fund, which is tougher to police using the appropriation process, and a grab on tax revenues before they can be counted with the rest of state realizations during the budgeting processes.  Dedicated funding sources can and do protect inefficient or questionable programs and expenditures.

Legislators argue that the Legislature exercises more than adequate oversight over these special funds even though they aren’t covered in the normal appropriation process.  But how does that explain findings like the State Auditor’s Report No. 20-06, which found more than $75 million in accounts associated with inactive special or revolving funds?  Or Report No. 20-07, which found tens of millions of dollars in special funds that swelled in size over the years, indicating an imbalance between the so-called dedicated funding source and the programs and services it was supposed to fund?  Or Report No. 20-08, which built on Report No. 20-06 and made the bold statement, “More than $483 million in excess moneys may be available to be transferred from 57 special and revolving fund accounts to the General Fund without adversely affecting programs”?

Maintenance of effort is supposed to be earned.  If a program or service efficiently delivers value to the people of Hawaii, then it is worthy of our continued support.   It’s not supposed to be forced by tax grabs, special funds, and other gimmicks.  We need to start recognizing that this “dedicated funding source” rhetoric is taking us down the wrong path. 

This week, we continue coverage of our legislature by highlighting some of the more unusual or remarkable tax bills being considered.  We focus on bills that not only have been introduced, but that have gotten a hearing before a legislative committee and are actively moving toward enactment.

House Bill 65, for example, requires a tax clearance before any professional or vocational license may be issued or renewed.  Some regulatory bodies, such as the contractors’ licensing board, do require tax clearances already.  But should the same requirement apply to realtors, doctors, cosmetologists, and physical therapists?  We’re concerned that there are 160,000 licenses out there.  If each of them needs to be cleared every year by a system that now issues about 10,000 clearances a year, for example, it’s easy to see how the Department of Taxation might not be able to keep up with demand.  Maybe they’ll have to rent some space in the convention center, bring in a bunch of workstations, and ask for a bunch of volunteers to help get the work out, just like how the Labor Department has been getting help pumping out unemployment claim determinations.  The House Consumer Protection Committee heard this bill and is advancing it with some amendments.

Senate Bill 775 tries to deal with the concern that we have too many tourists on our shores (which certainly isn’t the case now).  As introduced, the bill looks at visitor arrivals every year, and for every year that visitor arrivals equal or top 9 million, the transient accommodations tax (TAT) rate is automatically hiked by 2 percentage points.  If our visitor arrivals drop below 8 million, the TAT drops by 2 percentage points the following year (but not below the 10.25% rate where it is now).  The Senate Committee on Energy, Economic Development, and Tourism heard the bill and is passing it out with amendments.

Senate Bill 202 tries to stick it to the rich by eliminating the state income tax deduction for mortgage interest on a second home.  It also specifies that the amount of state revenue saved be deposited into the rental housing revolving fund.  The Department of Taxation pointed out in testimony on a similar bill last year that implementing a deduction disallowance is doable but figuring out how much was saved might not be.  Hawaii net income tax phases out itemized deductions for higher-income filers, so they might not get any appreciable benefit from a second home mortgage deduction.  The Senate Committee on Housing heard the bill and passed it out with no changes.

Senate Bill 497 would award a nonrefundable income tax credit to incentivize the food manufacturing industry in the state.  The income tax credit would be, up to an unspecified dollar ceiling, 100% of the expenses a taxpayer incurs for buying food manufacturing equipment, training employees on its use, improving energy efficiency in the manufacturing process, or studying or planning the implementation of a new food manufacturing facility.  Now, a 100% credit means that up to the dollar ceiling, the food manufacturer pays nothing and the taxpayers of Hawaii pay everything.  I would have thought that lawmakers learned about 100% credits through their experiences with the qualified high technology business credit in the early 2000’s – yes, the credit that was widely regarded as a fiscal disaster.  That bill was heard by the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Environment, and will move forward in an amended form.

Hold on to your wallets, folks, because this year’s great legislative adventure has just begun!