Revenue agency outlines FY25–FY27 ranges, warns of estimate-resetting in business taxes

The New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration told the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday that it is presenting a set of reasonable high and low revenue scenarios for fiscal year 2025 that will serve as the base for growth assumptions in 2026 and 2027.

Commissioner Lindsey Stepp, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration, told the committee "what we're going to talk about today is kind of 3 things" and summarized the office's approach: run five scenarios using year-to-date actuals, comparisons to plan and to the prior year, and then select what the agency regards as a reasonable high and low for each tax type.

That methodology frames the department's projections across tax types from business taxes to meals-and-rentals to tobacco. For business taxes, DRA reported fiscal-year-to-date receipts roughly $110.3 million, or about 18.2 percent, below plan and about $102.9 million, or 17.2 percent, below the prior year. Stepp explained part of the shortfall reflects a “resetting of estimated payments” by corporations after pandemic-era volatility in profits and estimated payments.

The agency ran a low scenario that projects the first seven months' shortfall extending through the year and a high scenario that applies prior-year actuals to the remaining months. On business-tax growth, DRA presented a range of about 3 to 8 percent for both 2026 and 2027, saying that range…