Tax Expenditure Report hearing set for Thursday, Forecasting Board to meet on Friday

By |2018-03-02T13:17:05-06:00October 24th, 2017|Blog, Home Featured, OpenSky, Revenue|0 Comments

Tax Expenditure Report hearing set for Thursday, Forecasting Board to meet on Friday

A hearing regarding Nebraska’s tax expenditures on Thursday and a meeting of the Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board on Friday will highlight a big week of Nebraska fiscal policy activity.

The Legislature’s Revenue and Appropriations committees will hold a joint hearing Thursday to discuss the Department of Revenue’s Interim Tax Expenditure Report. The hearing starts at 10 a.m. in State Capitol, Room 1113. NET Nebraska will stream the hearing live.

The enactment of the hearing is one of several steps Nebraska lawmakers have taken in recent years to bring more transparency to our state’s tax expenditures. Tax expenditures are like spending in that they represent money the state uses for some purpose. The difference is that instead of tax revenue being collected and then spent, the money is not collected in the first place. But while the Legislature must authorize spending every biennium, tax expenditures are generally only authorized once and then permanently written into the tax code. This allows some tax expenditures to outlive their usefulness and become significant drains on state revenue.

The Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board will meet Friday to forecast state revenue collections. The board will examine measures such as the state’s unemployment rate and economic activity to estimate individual income, corporate income, sales taxes, and other miscellaneous revenues the state can expect.

The forecasting board’s revenue projections could have significant ramifications for lawmakers as they look to make budget and tax policy decisions in the upcoming Legislative session. The most recent report on state tax receipts show the state is trailing the revenue forecast for the current fiscal year, which began July 1, by about $20 million. The meeting starts at 1 p.m. in the State Capitol, Room 1510. OpenSky will provide updates from the forecasting board meeting on our Twitter page.

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