Committee Hears Bill to Let R&D Tax Credits Stack With IRBs, Limit Transferability to $50M a Year; Substitute Tabled

House lawmakers and agency witnesses spent nearly two hours debating a committee substitute for House Bill 27, a proposal to modernize New Mexico's Technology Jobs and Research and Development Tax Credit by allowing the credit to be stacked with industrial revenue bonds (IRBs), permitting limited transferability and extending the carryforward period to seven years.

Sponsor remarks and expert testimony framed the measure as a narrow economic development tool to keep research commercialization and high-paying jobs in-state. "House Bill 27 is a bill to modernize our high-tech research and development tax credit," a sponsor told the committee, noting the bill would expand eligibility to operations in facilities financed or housed using an IRB while explicitly excluding data centers and national laboratories.

The nut of the substitute is threefold: (1) allow qualified expenditures for projects hosted on property using IRBs to qualify for the R&D credit (making the credit "stackable" with IRB-based incentives); (2) permit transferability of credits, capped statewide at $50,000,000 of transferred credits in any year and limited to transfers executed in 2026, 2027 and 2028; and (3) lengthen the carryforward period so companies may claim credits for up to seven years. Secretary Rob Black of the Economic Development Department told the committee that tying credits to physical infrastructure makes it "much more difficult for [that investment] to leave," which supporters said encourages commercialization here.

Supporters from labor and industry said the change is targeted and time-limited. Lisonbee Riley of the New Mexico…