After months of deliberation, the Governor’s Business Tax Policy Task Force has released a preliminary list of reforms to improve the efficiency and fairness of business taxation in Connecticut. Voices has been an active champion of calling such a high-profile tax review commission to shed light on a business tax code in dire need of a “defrag.”

The Task Force’s reforms show promise, and a list of additional reforms proposed by Comptroller Lembo is crucial to ensuring the Task Force’s changes succeed in practice. The Comptroller’s reforms include a series of transparency and accountability initiatives, many of which Voices has long argued for. The reforms include:

• Creating an online searchable database for business tax credits
• Encouraging towns to produce regular, publicly available reports on property tax abatements
• Producing annual analyses of who actually pays the taxes levied, and in what amount
• Enhancing reporting of Department of Economic and Community Development business assistance
• Improving the Office of Fiscal Analysis’ tax expenditure report
• Creating a permanent commission to review tax expenditures on an ongoing basis
• Requiring future tax credits to include annual dollar caps, much as we do already with traditional, appropriated spending