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Tax rebate cut, tax amnesty up for Senate vote
After six to nine months of sitting at the Senate, two revenue-generating bills will be put to a vote tomorrow during a session on Rota. One reduces the income tax rebate from 90 percent to 70 percent at the highest rebate level with proportional reduction at the lower levels, while the other one provides for another tax amnesty.
Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee chair Jovita Taimanao (Ind-Rota) said her committee had waited for months for departments and agencies’ responses to their request for comments on the tax amnesty bill’s impact but to no avail.
House Bill 18-166, House Draft 1, authored by Ways and Means Committee chair Tony Sablan (Ind-Saipan), passed the House in February. The bill was pulled out from the Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee, which has not come up with a committee report recommending the bill’s rejection or approval.
A Fiscal Affairs Committee report on the tax rebate cut measure, or House Bill 18-69, HS1, is also in tomorrow’s Senate session agenda for action. This comes nine months since the House sent the bill to the Senate.
The committee recommends that the full Senate membership pass the bill, authored by Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) in its current form.
The bill cuts the rebate from the Northern Marianas Territorial Income Tax and appropriates the revenues from Chapter 7 tax to the NMI Retirement Fund’s defined benefit plan members.
