Tax reform coming soon to Utah

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — A massive in-state tax reform effort could be wrapping up shortly.

The Tax Restructuring and Equalization Task Force was planning on having their final meeting last Thursday, until that was re-scheduled for Monday night.

In anticipation of the meeting, Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson joined Dave & Dujanovic to discuss some of the possible changes.

Overall, he says expect taxes to be down.

“It’s close to an $80-million reduction of revenue that the state of Utah is going to generate from the citizens that pay taxes right now,” Speaker Wilson explains.

According to Wilson, a significant portion of their plan is to reduce the tax burden on middle-class families.

“We are doing a number of things to relieve taxes for people,” he says.

Specifically, most households earning less than $50,000 will receive a grocery tax credit to offset any sales tax at the store.

Such a significant tax cut can raise concerns that some entities will lose funding, but according to Wilson that won’t happen.

When it comes to education, he’s emphatic that funding will stay consistent.

“We are going to take care of education in this bill,” Speaker Wilson says. “There’s not going to be one dime less funding going to public or higher education”

While in order to achieve that, the task force will be mixing and matching from various sources to make the money work.

“We’re going to take a little bit of the income tax out of higher education and replace it with sales tax as we balance out this structural imbalance,” he says.