Wisconsin Ag Connection - Senate Fails to Act on Ag Investment Tax Credit Bills

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Senate Fails to Act on Ag Investment Tax Credit Bills
Wisconsin Ag Connection - 03/17/2008

A pair of legislative bills that would have allowed investment tax credits for meat processing facilities and dairy cooperatives appears to be dead after the State Senate failed to bring them up before the end of the Legislature's normally scheduled session period. Both bills had passed the State Assembly in February.

According to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, the measures had already cleared the Senate's Agriculture Committee, but were not scheduled for a vote by the full Senate when the session ended last week.

The first bill, introduced by Rep. Al Ott of Forest Junction, would have provided meat processors with a refundable tax credit of up to 10 percent of qualified investments in a taxable year. Credit eligibility is capped at $200,000 per processing plant. The Farm Bureau says the meat processing industry generates $12.3 billion per year to the state's economy with nearly 88,000 jobs tied to meat processing.

The other measure was authored by Rep. Brett Davis from Oregon. That program would have allowed members of a dairy cooperative to claim the credit for the modernization or expansion expenses paid by the cooperative based on the volume of milk each farmer delivers to the cooperative. With 85 percent of all milk produced in Wisconsin marketed through cooperatives and nearly 60 percent of the cheese produced and marketed by those same dairy cooperatives it is extremely important that dairy cooperatives receive the same credit as proprietary plants.

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