Despite Republican opposition, the finance, revenue and bonding committee passed the Senate Democrats’ jobs bill 31-17 Thursday. <\/p>\n
The bill would create a revolving loan fund of up to $20 million to help businesses with less than 50 employees. The new bonding would be paid for by canceling projects that have already been approved by the legislature, but have not been approved by the State Bond Commission. <\/p>\n
It would also suspend the $250 business entity tax for two years for businesses with at least one employee and a net income of under $50,000. A tax surcharge on TARP bank workers who get bonuses of more than $1 million is meant to make up for the loss in revenue. <\/p>\n
It is the tax on TARP bonuses that is the most controversial provision in Senate Bill No. 1. <\/p>\n
Like several of her Republican colleagues, Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, questioned Thursday if lawmakers should move forward with the proposal if the tax could be found unconstitutional. <\/p>\n
Sen. Eileen Daily, D-Westbrook, responded by saying that Democrats found Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s opinion to be sufficient. Blumenthal recently said that taxing bonuses was “likely” constitutional.<\/p>\n
Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who has pledged to veto the tax bonus plan, has also distributed a legal opinion, which said that the legality of the tax proposal would undoubtedly be determined in court. <\/p>\n
Republicans also questioned whether a tax on TARP bonuses would generate the revenue anticipated. Initially, Democrats said the tax would bring in about $30 million, but the Office of Fiscal Analysis said Thursday that the tax would bring in between $2.7 million and $4.8 million in fiscal years 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. The office’s estimates were based on actual 2009 wage and employee data from the state Department of Labor and information gathered by New York’s attorney general.<\/p>\n
The Office of Fiscal Analysis said Connecticut would loss about $12 million per year beginning in fiscal year 2010-2011 if the business entity tax is suspended for approximately 48,000 businesses. <\/p>\n
The estimates and constitutional questions worry Sen. Andrew Roraback, R-Goshen. <\/p>\n
“I think we are on thin ice,” he said. <\/p>\n
Republicans called the tax on bonuses unfair and said it would be bad move that would not help the state become business friendly. They also said they wanted the business entity tax repealed for every business, calling the tax punitive. Republicans offered two amendments that would have repealed the tax, but they failed. <\/p>\n
The amendments also included several other ways to create jobs in Connecticut. Democrats said they agreed with the concepts, but said Republicans were trying to create an entirely new bill. Daily suggested that Republicans work on a commerce committee bill that already includes some of the ideas they presented Thursday. <\/p>\n
Senate Bill No. 1, which passed the finance committee with only minor changes, will now move forward in the legislative process. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite Republican opposition, the finance, revenue and bonding committee passed the Senate Democrats’ jobs bill 31-17 Thursday. The bill would create a revolving loan fund of up to $20 million to help businesses with less than 50 employees. The new bonding would be paid for by canceling projects that have already been approved by the legislature, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-501491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}