Alaska House Passes Online Sales Tax Bill

0:00It's April 2nd. This is Anchorage News Today, AI-powered stories from your city. I'm Cory with the story. Alaska's house just squeezed through a bill to grab more corporate income tax from out-of-state companies selling stuff online to folks of North. House bill 280 changes the game with market-based sourcing, basing taxes on where the customer lives, not the company's home base. It passed Wednesday by a tight 22-17 vote. This tweak means companies already paying taxes elsewhere would shift some dough to Alaska for business done here. Backers like Rep Calvin Schraige say, it's just getting our fair cut with almost no hits to local businesses. Targets mainly out-of-state sea corporations and the revenue department figures it could pull in about 15 million bucks a year. Lawmakers backing it argue the sales happen in Alaska, so we deserve the revenue. But the governor's team, through spokesperson Jeff Turner, pushes back hard, saying we need a full fiscal blueprint, not piecemeal taxes.

1:00House minority leader Delina Johnson echoes that, wanting a bigger plan before new levies. It's a remix of a bill governor Mike Dunlevy, vetoed last year, stripped of a part hitting digitized outfits more. They couldn't override it earlier this session, and this one lacks the three-quarter supermajority to block another veto. Now it heads to the Senate, which backed a version last year. Schraige hopes for wider bipartisan buy-in to push it toward the governor's desk and maybe seal the deal this time.