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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Senate Republicans meeting in a closed-door caucus decided to seek a six-month delay in reducing the sales tax on food.
Without support from the governor and House, the proposed delay is not likely.
The Senate Republicans cited the recently discovered errors in Tax Commission calculations of the cost of the governor's flatter income-tax proposal.
"We felt it was better to say, 'Let's slow down,"' Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said after Wednesday's caucus. "We really want to be certain that we have good information we can rely upon."
Tax Commission Chairwoman Pam Hendrickson said she has confidence in the commission's calculations on the costs of reducing the sales tax on food.
She said those calculations were made using "totally different models run by totally different people."
Delaying the change in the food tax would require a special session to stop the scheduled Jan. 1, 2007, implementation of the tax cut, which is to reduce the state's share of the sales tax on food by two percentage points to 5 percent, cutting state revenue by an estimated $70 million.
Gov. Jon Huntsman is not expected to add the delay proposal to the agenda for next week's special session.
"We are pleased that Utahns will receive a break on their sales tax on food beginning in January and are not anxious to delay that tax relief," said Mike Mower, the governor's deputy chief of staff.
House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, said attempting to delay the tax cut is a political maneuver by senators who have opposed the reduction all along and might use the extra time to kill it.
"They're trying to use the hype about these errors to undo what's already been done with the sales tax on food," Curtis said. "What information would they get with a delay? Not much. But they would have another general session to fight it."
Republicans in the House backed the removal of all sales tax from food last session but agreed to the partial reduction as part of a compromise that included a $70 million income tax reform plan pushed by the governor.
However, a $35 million error in computing the cost of the plan and this week discovery of another boosted the expected cost to $200 million.
Valentine said Wednesday that he is ready to look at just cutting income tax rates by $70 million.
Curtis said Wednesday that the money set aside for the income tax cut might be better used to take an additional 2 cents off the food tax.
However, Mower said, "The governor remains committed to using the $70 million for tax reform."
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
