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Revenue Committee approves bill aligning use-tax statutes with sales-tax changes
Summary
House Bill 40, meant to bring use-tax statutes into line with changes made to sales tax in recent legislation, passed the Senate Revenue Committee 5-0. The Department of Revenue said the measure is largely technical and discussed a possible interim project to combine sales and use tax chapters.
The Senate Revenue Committee voted 5-0 to pass House Bill 40, a technical bill that places the same language the Legislature approved for sales tax into the use tax statutes so both chapters match.
Brenda Henson, director of the Department of Revenue, told the committee the bill's language mirrors the provisions enacted in last year's House Bill 197 and that an earlier drafting omission had put identical provisions only in the sales tax chapter. "This bill simply puts the same language in our use tax statutes that we have in our sales tax statute," Henson said, explaining the change corrects a drafting gap so the laws are consistent.
Henson said the chapter-by-chapter mismatch occurred because the earlier bill did not update both Title 39, Chapter 15 (sales tax) and Chapter 16 (use tax). She said department staff have administered use tax consistent with the sales-tax changes that took effect July 1, 2024, but that the statutes need to be cleaned up to reflect that practice.
Committee members discussed whether a longer-term interim project should consider combining chapters 15 and 16 so identical language would not be duplicated in two chapters. Henson supported studying that option in the interim.
There was no public testimony. Senator Case moved the measure and Senator Pappas seconded; the committee recorded a 5-0 roll-call vote in favor (Senators Case, French, Eyde, Pappas and the committee chair voting aye). The committee adjourned at the end of the agenda.
Henson said the department can present section-by-section details if the committee prefers but described HB40 as a cleanup measure that preserves the enacted tax reporting efficiencies for vendors and taxpayers.
