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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
We're past the halfway point in the 2021 Legislative Session and House Democrats continue to hold up proposals with large, bipartisan support in order to use them during end-of-session negotiations. It is not what Minnesotans need or want, read below about our efforts to bring some of these bills to the House Floor over the last two weeks.
Next week the Legislature will be in recess in observance of the Passover & Easter Holidays. We will then return and hopefully move forward on some of the bipartisan solutions that will benefit all Minnesotans.
Bipartisan Bills to Help Minnesotans
Exempting forgiven Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan income from state taxes. Currently, Minnesota is the only state in the upper Midwest that has yet to exempt forgiven PPP loan payments. Without action, businesses could owe hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in state income taxes simply for using the PPP funds as intended by the federal government. The Senate passed a PPP tax relief bill earlier in the month with a veto-proof majority on a 55-12 vote.
The Federal government made these PPP loans for businesses forgivable contingent on businesses spending this money in a timely manner and keeping people employed. They were quite literally not allowed to save some of this money in order to pay taxes.
We need to provide a quick fix to make sure these loans are exempted from state taxes too. Waiting to take action until the end of session is causing great uncertainty at a time when businesses are finally starting to get back to some semblance of normal.
Conforming Unemployment Insurance taxable income to Federal Limits: this proposal targets those who lost their jobs last year and now have big tax bills because of the extra Unemployment Insurance (UI) relief money they received. It would exclude the first $10,200 of unemployment pay from income tax in the year 2020 and assures that the $600 and $300 federal relief unemployment bonuses will not be taxed by Minnesota, just as it is not taxed at the Federal level.
Funding for schools to offer in-person summer school programming. We supported a bill that would utilize the expected funds coming in from the federal government to help defray cost of in-person summer school learning to help students catch up from a year of distance learning, along with funding for student mental health, as well as early learning scholarships. We all have seen that, despite the best efforts of teachers and educators, distance learning has left far too many students behind. We need to make sure some of this incoming federal money is available for school districts to offer in-person schooling to catch up over the summer.
Unfortunately, as mentioned above, these proposals though they have overwhelmingly bipartisan support, are being held up so they can be used as part of end of session negotiations. This is extremely unfortunate and I hope we can come back from our Easter/Passover recess and get these important bills passed immediately.
With a large surplus full of one-time funds and federal money coming to Minnesota, these important issues can be resolved without raising taxes or putting our recovery in jeopardy.
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