House wants tax cut now

Despite GOP urgings, Huntsman set on reform

House Republicans said Wednesday they want to simply slice personal income tax rates by $70 million now rather than wait for Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to work out the problems with the price tag for his more complicated tax reform plan.

But the GOP governor told the Deseret Morning News that wasn't going to change his mind.

"I'm still committed to tax reform. We're still working out the details," Huntsman said, promising his plan won't change much because of a calculation error that boosted the cost by 50 percent. "It won't be too different than what we had before. . . . The premise is the same."

The governor, who took time off from a family vacation this week to tour briefly potential flood areas of the state, was still not ready to say exactly how he intends to fix his tax reform plan. Nor would he say how soon it could be ready for a vote.

"We've got a little bit of work to do," Huntsman said. "What is important is getting it right. This isn't about speed. It's about accuracy. It's about good policy, longer-term." He said tax reform shouldn't be "seen through a political lens."

House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, said he wasn't surprised the governor wasn't ready to go along with the majority party's call for a simple tax cut sooner rather than later. "I understand his desire for reform," Curtis said.

But there's "a lot of ambiguity" right now with the governor's plan, he said. "When there's a specific proposal, it's easier for people to get their arms around it and say, 'We can support that now.' We don't want to wait another eight or nine months."

Like their counterparts in the House, Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said Senate Republicans also want to take action. "We'd like to see a tax cut now," he said.

The House GOP position was taken a week after the governor abruptly canceled plans to call lawmakers back into special session next month to consider his "fairer, flatter" plan that was supposed to cost $70 million.

However, an error in the data supplied by the Utah State Tax Commission increased the plan's bottom line to more than $100 million. That's left in question the fate of the proposal to lower income tax rates to slightly less than 5 percent while eliminating most deductions.

The governor has sole authority to call lawmakers into special session and to set their agenda. Although he's taken taxes off the table, he said there are other issues that need to be addressed by lawmakers before the new budget year begins July 1.

House members, whose concerns about the governor's plan stalled action on it during the final minutes of the 2006 Legislature, said there's no reason to delay action on a tax cut since $70 million has already been set aside in the upcoming budget.

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