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Committee hears agency-backed cleanups to Montana tax code in SB 53
Summary
Sen. Greg Hertz and Department of Revenue staff described a series of technical and taxpayer‑relief adjustments in Senate Bill 53, including changes to education savings account rules, mineral royalty withholding, filing‑status language and a repeal of a rarely used probate certificate requirement. No committee vote was recorded at the hearing.
Senator Greg Hertz, sponsor of Senate Bill 53, told the House Taxation Committee the bill makes technical cleanups and taxpayer‑facing clarifications to Montana’s income tax laws.
The bill’s principal proponent at the hearing was Jake Ford, bureau chief of the Income Tax Withholding Bureau for the Montana Department of Revenue, who described the changes as agency cleanups that provide clarity and reduce unintended taxpayer burdens.
Ford said two changes relate to simplified filing statuses for education savings accounts. “By using the filing statuses themselves and doubling the amount, I think they both go from 3,000 to 6,000,” he said, explaining the change lets married filers contribute as couples and obtain the full benefit without filing two individual contributions. The bill also ties the definition of qualified withdrawals for certain education savings accounts to federal 529 rollover rules, and adopts the federal effective date so the state statute applies to tax years after Dec. 31, 2023.
Ford described another change as aligning the statute’s mineral royalty withholding with “the highest marginal tax rate in effect” rather than a numeric rate, so withholding will track future legislative changes to that top rate. He also said the bill clarifies the deadline to file the elderly homeowner/renter credit so it matches the date of the Form 2 income tax return and its automatic holiday‑adjustment rules.
The bill removes a seldom‑used provision requiring the Department of Revenue to issue a certificate when property is inherited from a decedent who died when an inheritance or state tax existed (prior to February 2001 and February 2004, respectively). Ford said the provision affects very few cases and reopening probate to obtain the certificate is an extra step for heirs.
Department staff Brian Olsen and other informational witnesses remained available for technical questions at the committee’s request. Committee members asked about the federal estate tax and how the certificate repeal might affect later discoveries of small withholding amounts; Ford said the repeal was intended to remove an extra filing burden and the department did not expect it to cause missed collections.
No committee action or vote on SB 53 was recorded in the hearing transcript; the committee moved on to the next bill after the department’s testimony.
