Huntsman ran his gubernatorial campaign last year on revitalizing Utah's economy, growing the tax base to be able to pay for 140,000 new public-school children and burgeoning college enrollments.

Toward that end, Huntsman is reorganizing the state's economic development efforts and wants HB78 and a few other, less important, tools to "sell Utah," as his chief economic coordinator Chris Roybal told the House committee that approved HB78 two weeks ago.

"The governor can market this (repeal) and bring in the jobs needed to fund education and other programs," said Harper, R-West Jordan.

The repeal should come this session to jump-start that economic development blitz, supporters of the repeal say.

Ashdown said that while sales and personal income tax changes "are just concepts," a legislative task force and former Gov. Olene Walker's tax expert studied the corporate income tax in-depth and both recommended its repeal. Repeal "gives a competitive advantage now," Ashdown said.

Remember, Ashdown said, HB78 is "just a first step" in a much broader reform package to come later.

But Dunnigan and other critics said Monday starting the repeal of the 5 percent corporate income tax — before overall tax reform comes to lawmakers next year — makes little sense.

It's like being afraid that waves will wash water into your rowboat, "so we drill a hole in the bottom and sink ourselves," Dunnigan said. There's little chance, he and others said, that making the Utah economy grow will replace the $200 million each year that the corporate income tax brings in to schools.

Why not wait a year, asked Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, for a soon-to-be-formed tax reform study group to report before the 2006 Legislature how the state's overall tax structure should be changed?

No need, said Harper. HB78 doesn't begin the phase-in — cutting the current 5 percent tax to 4 percent — until 2008, with another percentage point coming off each year until the whole tax is gone in 2012.

Huntsman aides said if it becomes clear that Utah's schools can't be properly funded during the phase-in, lawmakers can act to freeze the rate cuts.

Even with Dunnigan's changes Monday, the amended HB78 still would adopt a two-prong business tax configuration, with each business owner deciding which is the best way to calculate Utah taxes. That change will cut, overall, between $7 million and $8 million from Utah corporate taxes, and is a decent enough incentive for a business to move or stay here, said Dunnigan.

But Ashdown said Utah is currently behind the curve in offering that two-prong tax alternative — most states already do so. The "double-weighted sales" alternative "just levels the playing field, it really doesn't give us a leg up" in attracting business to Utah, Ashdown said.

Still, said Allen and other representatives, a good, healthy public education system is vital to growing Utah's economy, offsetting a currently reasonable tax structure.

Said Rep. Lou Shurtliff, D-Ogden: "Business executives who come here are concerned about the quality of schools, the quality of life. There are other things that affect whether a corporation comes here, not just the corporate income tax."

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com