House DFL leaders propose tax relief plan

Article by: MIKE KASZUBA , Star Tribune
Updated: January 29, 2010 - 10:15 PM

Package's centerpiece is a tax credit for high-tech and green industries, and it includes megamall expansion.

88
comments
resize text
print
buy reprints

Tweet
share

email
Email share

your name

your email

recipients email

+ add a comment add a comment

One week before the Legislature convenes, DFL leaders proposed a series of small-scale tax relief proposals Friday that they said would cost taxpayers little but create jobs and perhaps even start the Mall of America's long-awaited second phase.

The centerpiece of the plan would create a so-called angel investment credit, which would provide a 25 percent tax credit for investors in high tech, manufacturing or green businesses with fewer than 100 employees and less than $2 million in gross receipts. The credit, coupled with an enhanced historic rehabilitation credit, would be funded by eliminating state tax loopholes that DFLers said would save $10 million a year.

"We are working in the world of the doable," Rep. Ann Lenczewski, DFL-Bloomington, the House Taxes Committee chairwoman, said in explaining that the proposals had the preliminary approval of Republicans.

House Minority Leader Kurt Zellers downplayed them, saying that while some features, such as the angel investment credit, were good ideas, the DFL package would have only a marginal impact on creating jobs.

The proposal's most intriguing feature involves the Mall of America, which won legislative approval for a public subsidy package in 2008 that mall officials said did not go far enough to make the mall's second phase doable. Under the new proposal, which DFLers said would not increase taxes or commit state money to the project, state revenue bonds and proceeds from local taxes authorized in 2008 could also be used for the mall's original phase.

Mall officials, in a statement released Friday, said they had been pushing for "technical" changes to the 2008 legislation but were vague Friday in providing details on what the second phase now entailed, how many jobs it would create and when it would begin.

Mike Kaszuba • 651-222-1673