Lamnidae

The State Chamber’s Montana Main Street blog continues in its quest to make its name more ironic today with yet another screed about the Montana Department of Revenue and its goal of chasing down out of state tax cheats. The irony comes in the blog’s recent self-positioning at the head of the spear when it comes of defending non-Montanan tax scofflaws. The very same tax cheats who likely end up hurting Montana’s “main street” businesses when they get left covering revenue gaps.

I assume the Chamber’s mission against Revenue’s effort to level the playing field for Montana businesses stems from their initial reaction to an agency request for additional FTE, but their recent anti-executive agency tone has become reminiscent of the U.S. Chamber’s transformation to a thinly veiled front for the GOP in recent decades. On the other hand, even the argument against increasing the workforce at Dept. of Revenue rings hollow when one takes into account that the Racicot administration had over 700 FTE in the office, Martz had at least 660, and right now the office is running on 647 FTE (I checked) while trying to do the work that the previous two admins ignored.

The Chamber also couches their defense of out of state interests in the argument that the last session’s measures would have complicated the tax code for Montana businesses and saddled them with additional work. However, this issue proves to be a non-starter when one considers that the most complicated of all the proposals (House Bill 74 that would have set up a new “withholding” system on mineral royalties) was supported by Montana oil, gas and minerals companies who feel that their competitors are given a competitive advantage due to their ability to ignore royalty payments.

Montana main street business must be asking themselves, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

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