LANSING - In just over two weeks a proposal on a replacement tax for the Michigan Single Business Tax is due according to a de facto if not de jure deadline from the joint Select Committee on Economic Growth, but it is unlikely that such a report will come on December 1.
Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema (R-Wyoming) still hopes that the panel will make a recommendation early in December, and still holds out hope that a replacement tax can be enacted before the Legislature adjourns sine die.
But that hope may be nothing more as the growing expectation seems to be that the Legislature and Governor Jennifer Granholm anticipate a tax plan developed in 2007.
Sen. Nancy Cassis (R-Novi), the Senate chair of the committee, said the early December request for a report "may be more of a suggestion than an absolute deadline."
In fact, the resolution that created the select committee did not put a date to when it should report to the Legislature, but the expectation was that if any proposal were to be completed yet this year the proposal would have to be in hand by December 1.
Cassis said "job one" of the select committee - whose members include Speaker-elect Rep. Andy Dillon - is to develop a competitive tax proposal, but she did not say when she would next call the committee in (it is the Senate's turn to call a meeting).
An official in the office of Rep. Fulton Sheen (R-Plainwell), the House chair of the committee, referred questions about the panel back to Cassis' office.
Ari Adler, spokesperson for Sikkema, said Sikkema still hopes the committee will produce a proposal so that the Legislature could try to enact it yet this year.
Sikkema is working on his own proposal, one that uses a proposal from the Grand Rapids Chamber as its base. That plan called for an end to the state's personal property tax as well and used a gross receipts tax to replace the SBT. Sikkema hopes to release his proposal soon.
Cassis said the committee has six or seven different proposals it is reviewing, most which have some commonality in application.
But as to whether a proposal will move in the lame duck session, that will be up to the leaders, she said.
Matt Resch, spokesperson for Speaker Craig DeRoche (R-Novi), said that unless some sort of consensus plan comes forward that there should be no effort to rush action on an SBT replacement.
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