Auto tax exemption for trucks fails in state Senate

Oklahoma’s Senate struck a blow to one of Gov. Mary Fallin’s special session priorities Thursday by rejecting an exemption to the state’s new vehicle sales tax

The bill would have exempted large trucks, like semis and their trailers, and oilfield frac tanks, from the 1.25-percent sales tax adopted in May. Lawmakers said they never wanted to include large commercial trucks in the list of vehicles that would be taxed. Fallin included the proposal on her special session wish list in September.

Fiscal analysts projected the earnings to be more than $100 million in the first year, but they reportedly did not include earn- ings from the sale of semi trucks.

Lawmakers who supported the bill said Oklahoma has long been a state where national retailers purchase and tag their transport vehicles. Without the exemption, they said, companies like Walmart and Lowe’s will buy and tag in other states.

Opponents criticized the bill, saying it singled out an industry for a tax break during a time when the state is actively seeking revenue from others.

“It is the common man of Oklahoma that’s driving these tractor trailers. They’re the ones that are going to be negatively impacted by this because those companies are going to move elsewhere,” said the bill’s Senate author Ron Sharp, R-Shawnee. “So when you’re talking about justice, you better be thinking about that guy that’s going to lose his job because you’re looking at justice.”

Democratic Senate Leader John Sparks, however, said no one had done an in-depth analysis on how taxing large trucks would affect Oklahoma’s economy. There also wasn’t a lobbying effort by those who supported the bill, he added.

“We are in an extraor- dinary session. And in an extraordinary session, we should provide bills extraordinary scrutiny,” said Sparks, D-Norman. “In this situation, I don’t know if this is good policy, bad policy; we have no data on the positive or negative impacts of this. We have an absence, a void of data.”

The measure, House Bill 1074, failed by a 20-17 vote.