Washington ag avoids big, direct tax hits from special session

Washington Ag Today April 14, 2010 Agriculture managed to avoid any major direct taxes in the revenue package state lawmakers finally agreed on to end the special legislative session early Tuesday morning. Scott Dahlman on the staff of the Washington State Farm Bureau sums up some of the revenue proposals agriculture fought off.

Dahlman: “We did manage to stop them from raising the hazard substance tax, which would have affected us, or applying B&O to agriculture which was mentioned, or applying the sales tax to fertilizer which was also mentioned. So the big major ones we were able to convince them it would have heavily damaged ag and was the wrong direction to go.”

Dahlman says farmers and ranchers will be hit indirectly by an increase in the B&O tax on the servicing category.

Dahlman: “And services covers everything from attorneys to accountants to veterinarians to farm labor services. So there will be an indirect hit on agriculture because of that.”

Dahlman thinks there is a good recognition in the legislature overall of how important a driver agriculture is to the state’s economy and by doing damage to the industry the economic recovery would be hampered.

State lawmakers also adopted a supplemental operating budget before adjourning. That budget has 13.5 million dollars in cuts overall for Washington State University, or about a 6.3 percent spending reduction. That’s in the range the university was expecting.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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