Devils are in the details of tax-cut legislation

Will Utahns really get a $230 million tax cut next year?

This week, state House Republicans held a daylong, closed caucus. And when they came out, leaders announced that most of the 56-member caucus voted for the big tax cut.

In fact, the $230 million tax cut had support from members "in the high 40s," said House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy. Curtis said he was a bit surprised not only by the size of the tax cut caucus members voted for but also for the size of the support for the $230 million number — greater than 38, which is a majority in the whole 75-member House.

Of course, said Curtis, the devils are in the details.

And House Republicans did not vote on which taxes should be cut by which amount. "We only took a position on the overall number" of the tax cut.

If the 2006 Legislature ultimately agrees to that tax cut — and it can get GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to go along — it would be the largest tax reduction in the state's history.

But don't start thinking how you can spend that extra money yet. There are miles and miles to go.

Quizzed on what the rationale was in picking the $230 million figure, House budget chairman Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, admitted there really wasn't much — beyond the fact that between one-time surpluses ($449 million) and revenue growth estimates for next fiscal year ($581 million) lawmakers will decide how to allocate $1 billion.

That's 1 with a "B" following it.

Never have state bosses seen so much new money. Not only that, in late February the Legislature and Huntsman will get updated revenue estimates for this year and next.

History shows that rarely do those updated estimates come in under the December estimates on which the governor builds his budget and the majority GOP legislators make their preliminary budget calculations.

In other words, legislators and Huntsman could have even MORE money to spend or give in tax cuts come late February.

Utah's economy is really growing right now — housing construction remains strong; personal incomes are rising, and sales tax collections are coming in 11 percent higher than anticipated. The corporate income tax is coming in 10 times higher than estimated.

All this makes Huntsman's recommended $60 million tax cut — one of the largest ever suggested or given — seem like small potatoes compared to what House Republicans are suggesting.

Of course politics — personal and party — has a lot to do with the House Republicans' ideas.