The Alabama Taxpayer Bill of Rights passed out of the Alabama Senate Thursday after a prolonged debate and over the objections of Senate Democrats.
The bill seeks to remove the Alabama Dept. of Revenue from the tax assessment appeals process because they essentially have a vested interest in siding with the state in such appeals.
TBOR would abolish the Alabama Dept. of Revenue’s Administrative Law Division and create a new state commission called the Alabama Tax Appeal Commission, which would serve as an independent Tax Tribunal. Unsurprisingly, because the bill makes changes to a government bureaucracy that has been in place since 1983, the Revenue Dept. has balked at relinquishing their power to decide appeals. They have even argued that the bill creates a new bureaucracy. In reality, The bill simply moves the Administrative Law Division out of the Dept. of Revenue, including its budget, to a new independent entity, the Alabama Tax Appeals Commission. There is no additional cost. It simply creates independence for the first time.
Alabama is currently among the minority of states that lack an independent tax appeals tribunal. As a result, the state recently received a “D” on the new State Tax Due Process Scorecard issued by the Council On State Taxation.
TBOR brought together conservative grassroots groups and the Business Council of Alabama (BCA), both of which pushed hard for the bill’s passage.
“Alabama taxpayers finally can claim victory with today’s passage of TBOR,” said BCA President and CEO Billy Canary. “For years, the Business Council of Alabama has been working on behalf of Alabama taxpayers to pass this commonsense legislation that levels the playing field in the tax appeals process by separating the tax adjudicator from the tax collector. Since the beginning, the singular goal of this legislation has been fairness, and the BCA commends the Alabama Legislature for updating the current TBOR.”
TBOR has been a BCA priority for several years, as a majority of states have adopted some form of the independent tax appeals model. Others in the Alabama business community have joined forces with the BCA in support of the legislation under the banner of the Business Associations’ Tax Coalition (BATC), which includes 27-member business and trade associations. Attempts to pass this legislation stretch back to the late 1990s.
The bill now heads to the House, which passed a similar version of the bill earlier in the session.
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