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Legislators receive primer on coal severance tax fund, trust balances and spending rules
Summary
Legislators were briefed on how Montana's coal severance tax is split between a constitutionally protected trust and cash distributions, how interest is used for state programs, and how House Bill 515 would interact with the trust.
Sam Schaeffer, a staff member in the Legislative Services fiscal division, told the House Education Committee that Montana collected about $77,000,000 in coal severance tax in fiscal 2024 and that the state's constitution requires at least half of severance receipts to be deposited into a coal trust.
Schaeffer said the remaining half is distributed as cash to several state special revenue accounts and programs. "You can see last year in fiscal 20 24, we collected about 77,000,000 in coal tax," he told the committee. "The constitution says that at least 50% of the coal mine every year, the coal severance tax must be deposited into the coal trust."
Why it matters: the corpus (principal) of the coal trust is protected by the constitution and may be…
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