Department of Revenue data shows $11.2 billion in annual tax expenditures; sales-tax exemptions dominated, presenter says

Eddie, a staff presenter at the Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee’s Oct. 12 meeting, walked members through four Department of Revenue documents that together summarize statewide tax expenditures and exemptions across sales, income and property taxes.

Eddie told the committee that the state’s published tax-expenditure report lists about $11,200,000,000 in annual tax expenditures and that the sales-tax exemptions line item totals roughly $8,700,000,000, a figure he described as a statistical and conceptual total rather than an immediately actionable policy pot of money.

He explained the Department of Revenue groups sales-tax exemptions into several categories in the report: legal exemptions (about $150 million), conceptual exemptions that preserve the retail-sales-tax structure (the largest category), public-policy…