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Revenue & Tax committee: quick list of bills the panel advanced and actions taken
Summary
The Senate Revenue & Tax Committee considered multiple bills after SB 394. Several agency and procedural measures were approved; others were technical fixes or tax-related relief measures. Below is a compact summary of each bill the committee considered and the committee’s action.
The Senate Revenue & Tax Committee considered a series of bills after debate on SB 394. Most measures were considered with brief presentations and passed on committee motions; a few required agency or fiscal comments. Below are the bills taken up, short descriptions, and committee outcomes.
SB 408 — Exclude certain federal agriculture assistance from state income tax - Sponsor: Sen. Blake Johnson. - Summary: Exempts specified federal economic assistance and disaster payments to farmers from Arkansas individual income tax. - Fiscal note: DFA reviewed the bill and treated it as budget-neutral for the current forecast because the payments were not included in the forecast; revenue impact for collections classified as "indeterminate" in DFA work-up. - Committee action: Motion to report do-pass carried by voice vote.
SB 529 — Independent Tax Appeals Commission housekeeping and small-claims authority - Sponsor: Sen. Blake Johnson. - Summary: Technical and procedural clarifications to the Independent Tax Appeals Commission Act, including a small-claims process for disputes under a dollar threshold. - Fiscal note: DFA reported no state revenue impact; the bill is procedural. - Committee action: Motion to report do-pass carried by voice vote.
HB 1274 — County collector response times for title closings - Sponsor: Rep. Les Warren. - Summary: Requires county collectors to respond within three business days to requests for certified real-property-tax payoff amounts used in real-estate closings; if a collector fails to respond, the collector must accept the real-estate tax payment without requiring unrelated personal-property taxes. - Committee action: Motion to report do-pass carried by voice vote.
SB 494 — Arkansas Tobacco Control: consolidate manufacturer permits and eliminate combined vapor permit - Sponsor/Agency: Arkansas Tobacco Control. - Summary: Consolidates multiple manufacturer permits into a single manufacturer permit for tobacco, vapor and liquid products; removes an out-of-state holder’s special combined permit that allowed wholesaler/manufacturer/retailer status outside the 3-tier system. - Committee action: Motion to report do-pass carried by voice vote.
SB 495 — Tobacco-control invoices and seizure valuation - Sponsor/Agency: Arkansas Tobacco Control. - Summary: Requires permitted buyers and sellers to include permits and permitted physical locations on invoices to reduce illegal sales into the state; clarifies how auditors calculate unpaid excise taxes on seized untaxed products when invoices or manufacturer prices are not available. - Committee action: Motion to report do-pass carried by voice vote.
SB 530 — Incentives for large manufacturing investment (Green Bay Packaging project) - Sponsor: Sen. Brianne Davis. - Summary: Provides a statutory framework for a very large-scale manufacturing investment (sponsor described a Phase 1 investment around $1 billion) with a reduced percentage tax-credit structure compared with prior measures, a $5 million-per-year cap on transferable credits, and job and investment thresholds. The measure includes standard cost-benefit and clawback requirements administered by AEDC and DFS. - Fiscal note: DFA scored the measure as budget-neutral under the committee’s assumptions (in part because of limits on the state’s buyback/capability to extinguish credits and AEDC cost-benefit review). AEDC described its economic-impact modeling (InPlan) and said it evaluates payroll, capital investment and multiplier effects over a 10-year horizon. - Committee action: Motion to report do-pass carried by voice vote.
HB 1072 (as amended) — Property-tax exemption for disabled veterans and surviving dependents (technical cleanup) - Sponsors: Sen. Mark Johnson (House bill filed by Rep. Cooper amended in committee). - Summary: Clarifies eligibility and administrative procedures so collectors can consistently apply the disabled-veteran homestead exemption and ensure surviving spouses and minor dependents can remain eligible; the amendment addresses information flows between state vital-records and county assessors/collectors. - Committee action: Motion to report do-pass (as amended) carried by voice vote.
HB 1658 — Extension of property-tax payment window for deployed service members (including National Guard deployments) - Sponsor: Rep. Dave Wallace (presenting in Senate committee). - Summary: Extends the penalty-exemption window for property-tax payments to service members who were deployed within the U.S. (for example, National Guard activation) and requires proof of deployment (orders or DD-214) to claim the extension. - Committee action: Motion to report do-pass carried by voice vote.
Process notes and agency input - DFA and AEDC representatives appeared where bills had potential fiscal or incentive implications and provided the committee with Green Sheets/fiscal notes or explained work in progress. For SB 408 DFA said the implementation cost exists (programming) and that collections are indeterminate; SBA 530’s incentives would be evaluated via AEDC cost-benefit modeling; existing statute provides an option for the state to buy back eligible tax credits (80% of face value, subject to annual caps) to limit long-term exposure.
Where to read the bills - Committee staff will post the text and fiscal notes to the legislative document server. For bills with agency amendments or technical fixes (SB 494, SB 495, HB 1072), the committee accepted sponsor/agency clarifications and moved the measures forward with the changes adopted in committee.
Outcome summary (committee votes) - SB 408 — reported do-pass - SB 529 — reported do-pass - HB 1274 — reported do-pass - SB 494 — reported do-pass - SB 495 — reported do-pass - SB 530 — reported do-pass - HB 1072 (as amended) — reported do-pass - HB 1658 — reported do-pass
The committee reached these outcomes largely by voice vote after brief sponsor and agency remarks; where fiscal notes required additional work, DFA or AEDC representatives stated the agency position or noted a fiscal analysis was in progress.
