Chamber against all but 2 tax hikes

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's largest business organization is calling for cigarette and gas tax hikes but opposes all other tax increases.

The Salt Lake Chamber, which represents 5,700 businesses, announced its legislative priorities Wednesday, just days before Monday's opening of the Utah Legislature.

The chamber is against HB90, a bill sponsored by Brian King, D-Salt Lake, that would create income tax brackets and would increase taxes on the rich. For instance, people who earn at least $750,000 would be taxed $42,500 plus 7 percent of income greater than $750,000.

"It is the tax on the wealthy that is driving them out of the country," said Lane Beatty, the chamber's president and chief executive officer.

"A tax on the top 2 percent is really a tax on small business," said Clark Ivory, chief executive officer of Ivory Homes and former chairman of the chamber's Board of Governors.

Utah doesn't have many large corporations headquartered in the state, with most employers being small- and medium-sized companies. "What that means is they employ fewer people," Ivory said. "They have cutbacks. It's a disaster right now."

The chamber also opposes a proposal by Gov. Gary Herbert to end the sales tax vendor discount, which allows businesses that pay taxes monthly online — those who have more than $50,000 in sales tax receipts a year — to keep 1.31 percent to recover the costs of filing taxes online.

The chamber maintains that credit card fees, training employees, programming cash registers, documentation and other costs associated with filing monthly taxes are more expensive than the tax break.

"Utah retailers have trimmed every cost they can and sadly many have gone out of business," said Jake Boyer, president of the Boyer Co. and chamber Board of Governors chairman.

The chamber doesn't have a specific tax proposal on the table for cigarettes and noted the majority of Utahns want the tax increased.

"The reality is, it doesn't make logical sense, in my opinion," Beatty said about the Legislature's past resistance to increasing the tax. "Tell me why Utah has the same tobacco taxes as the tobacco states?"

The chamber's fuel tax plan is more specific: a 10-cents-per-gallon increase, said Chris Redgrave, who chairs the chamber's Can-Do Coalition.