PAR blasts Dept. of Revenue on tax credits

In a letter released today, PAR President Robert Travis Scott highlights the Department of Revenue’s failure to create a list of vehicles eligible for an alternative fuel vehicle tax credit until this April, three years after the law was passed. The April ruling has been rejected by Gov. Bobby Jindal, and the Revenue Department has not yet issued new rules explaining the scope of the credit. An outside estimate pegs the possible cost of the credit at $200 million annually; the fiscal note prepared in 2009 projected a five-year cost of $907,000. “We do not know how much of the spike in the cost was due to the April publication of the vehicle list, or whether the program all along was running more expensively than the public knew,” Scott says. “[I]t appears that neither the Legislature nor the governor’s office asked to see proposed rules for the program, and they did not follow up to revisit the program’s impact.” The lack of accurate numbers, he says, “could be a symptom of a state system that fosters obscurity.” Scott says the Department of Revenue’s annual Tax Exemption Budget is “not the best reflection of reality.” As an example, he says the 2011-12 budget lumps $865.5 million in tax exemptions into one category labeled “other exemptions.” “Among the variety of exemptions under this category, no one knows how much each one is costing the state,” Scott says. A legislative commission that will attempt to assess the state’s exemptions, credits and rebates meets for the first time Monday. Read the full letter here. —David Jacobs