HB2712 - 472R - House Bill Summary

House of Representatives

HB 2712

tax decisions; distribution

Sponsor: Representatives Yarbrough, Huffman, Allen J, Anderson et al

DPA	Committee on Ways and Means
w/d	Committee on Judiciary
DPA	Caucus and COW
x	As Transmitted to the Governor

HB 2712 makes tax decisions available to the public.

History

Currently, tax decisions made in the Department of Revenue (DOR), the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) and other state and local tax agencies are confidential. Likewise, some decisions at the State Board of Tax Appeals, the Tax Court and other courts are not published. While the DOR has access to these decisions, taxpayers do not. Taxpayer organizations and practitioners have previously asked the DOR to publish redacted decisions to their website. Only a few decisions have been posted. Currently, the Municipal Tax Hearing Office does publish redacted municipal tax decisions.

This bill would give taxpayers equal access to tax decisions.

Provisions

· Requires the following agencies to provide tax decisions to the law libraries, state university Colleges of Law, the State Law Library, the Arizona State Library and any person who requests them, and to publish tax decisions on their official website.

· The DOR

· The OAH

· Each city or town tax hearing office or the municipal tax hearing officer.

· The Department of Economic Security (DES)

· The Department of Transportation (DOT)

· The State Board of Tax Appeals

· Requires the Arizona Supreme Court to adopt rules that establish a procedure for all Arizona courts to distribute tax memorandum decisions to the general public.

· Defines memorandum decision relating to the rules for distributing decisions by the Arizona courts.

· Defines redacted tax decision as a decision with the name of the taxpayer, the amount of penalty and interest in dispute, the amount of tax in dispute and any other information that might identify the taxpayer deleted from the text of the decision.

· Defines tax decision for each of the agencies listed above. Tax decisions do not include published opinions issued by the Tax Court, Court of Appeals, or Supreme Court.

· Requires the agencies and courts to establish and maintain an official website by January 1, 2008 if they do not currently have one.

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· Forty-seventh Legislature