Many Maricopa County lawmakers have been asking for information regarding tax rate changes in their respective districts in order to respond to their constituents' questions resulting from the Maricopa County Treasurer Hos Hoskins' letter to homeowners blaming the State Legislature and the Arizona Tax Research Association for any tax increases in those bills. 

Dubbed the “Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona Amendment,” this measure will require affected Arizona utilities provide at least 50% of their annual retail sales of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030. The initiative will have a profound impact on the capital investment and production costs for Arizona utilities which will require significant rate increases on customers.

The State of Arizona recently responded to demands for higher teacher pay with a plan to increase base K-12 funding to provide a 20% teacher pay increase by the fall of 2020. ATRA analyzed Arizona teacher pay earlier this year, providing relevant facts and context to the policy issue. With this dramatic taxpayer investment, Arizona’s relative teacher pay ranking shifts considerably. This release also highlights conclusions from our K-12 funding studies.

In July, the Arizona Tax Court ruled against Pinal County in the Goldwater Institute’s challenge of Pinal’s transportation sales tax. As you know, ATRA was directly involved in this issue from the outset and informed Pinal County officials at their budget meeting on June 20, 2017 that ATRA had significant legal concerns regarding their proposal.

Repealing Bracket Indexing is a $1.25 Billion Income Tax Increase over 10 years on all Arizonans

The SCOTUS ruling overturning Quill/Bellas Hess in South Dakota v. Wayfair is good news for Arizona businesses and taxpayers. The court sided with South Dakota and invalidated the “physical presence” test for the collection of sales taxes on remote sellers. The Court made the case for why South Dakota’s simplified sales tax law does not burden out-of-state (remote) sellers, but also insisted that states with more complex or overreaching laws would be in violation of the commerce clause.

The Department of Revenue’s Debt Oversight Commission annually releases a full accounting of the debt held by all of Arizona’s state and local governments.

In a split vote, the Town of Gilbert elected to raise its secondary property tax for FY17 from a rate of $1.0567 to $1.0609. This results in a tax levy increase of approximately $1.5 million. Surprisingly, some councilmembers attempted to argue the tax rate and levy increase wasn’t a tax increase at all. For town leaders to suggest this is not a tax increase is simple obfuscation.