{"id":12872,"date":"2013-02-25T08:23:12","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T14:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=12872"},"modified":"2014-01-13T11:45:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T17:45:29","slug":"new-severance-tax-on-limestone-not-dead-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2013\/02\/25\/new-severance-tax-on-limestone-not-dead-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"New Severance Tax On Limestone Not Dead After All"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

A gate into a silica sand mining operation near Mill Creek in south-central Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<\/div>

For years, south-central Oklahoma lawmakers have been pushing for a new tax on companies that mine for stone and sand, particularly in the sensitive Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer, location of some of the world\u2019s best limestone.<\/p>

They haven\u2019t had much luck in red-state Oklahoma, and as StateImpact reported earlier this month<\/a>, the effort appeared to be dead again this session.<\/p>

Springer Republican Frank Simpson\u2019s Senate bill would\u2019ve allowed counties to impose a \u2018severance tax\u2019 on each ton of aggregate removed from the ground and sold in a different county or out of state.<\/p>

<\/p>

That bill got a hearing, but didn\u2019t make it out of committee, and Simpson expressed little hope for similar legislation in the House.<\/p>

\u201cWe still have a vehicle in the House, but we probably won\u2019t pursue it this year,\u201d Simpson said.<\/p>

But after passing through a subcommittee, the House version<\/a> still has a chance.<\/p>

It addresses one of the biggest concerns on the Senate side: The \u2018double-tax\u2019 that would result if a new severance tax is added to the sales tax. Charles McCall, vice-chairman of the House Revenue and Tax Subcommittee, and the bill\u2019s author:<\/p>

\u201cThe bill is structured to allow a severance tax by county vote, but only on material where a sales tax is not already collected. If it\u2019s sold in Oklahoma to an end user in Oklahoma, there would be appropriate sales tax collected and remitted on that. It would stay with the county and the State of Oklahoma.\u201d<\/p>

McCall says aggregate-rich Oklahoma counties don\u2019t get much more than damaged roads when companies from Texas and Germany send the rocks back home to be sold.<\/p>

\u201cHowever, if this material were sold out of state \u2014 and there is a large amount of material that does leave the State of Oklahoma, \u2014 whichever destination state that it arrives, if there is applicable sales tax it would be remitted in that<\/em> state. So we\u2019re not interested in a double taxation scenario, but we are interested in a financial benefit on that material where those sales tax dollars leave the state.\u201d<\/p>

McCall\u2019s bill still has a long way to go, but previous attempts at creating a severance tax on aggregates haven\u2019t gotten this far.<\/p>

\u201cI think we have some traction in the House. Ultimately, if we can get it through the House I hope the Senate will take a good look at it again with an open mind,\u201d McCall says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, south-central Oklahoma lawmakers have been pushing for a new tax on companies that mine for stone and sand, particularly in the sensitive Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer, location of some of the world\u2019s best limestone.They haven\u2019t had much luck in red-state Oklahoma, and as StateImpact reported earlier this month, the effort appeared to be dead again […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":9485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[509,508,427],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12872"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17964,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872\/revisions\/17964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}