Republican leader expects ‘top to bottom’ Iowa tax review

ALTOONA - A top House Republican on Friday told a tax group he expects the new Republican-led Legislature will take a fresh 'top to bottom” look at Iowa tax policy, with a special emphasis on revamping income taxes to make the state more competitive and attractive for job-creating investments.

House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow, R-Windsor Heights, told an Iowa Taxpayer Association forum the 59 Republicans who will hold sway in the Iowa House for the next two years plan to hold a closed-door planning meeting at the Capitol next week to begin crafting the specifics of their 2017 session agenda.

The 87th General Assembly is slated to convene Jan. 9.

'There will be big bills this year, and it's going to be exciting to find out what we're able to get done and what we can't,” Hagenow told reporters after the ITA event. 'We're going to be bold, we're going to do big things, but we're going to do smart policy, we're going to do it the right way and we're going to work with everyone involved.”

Hagenow said funding water quality improvements and tackling difficult budget issues will be 2017 focuses. But Republicans who now control both the House and Senate along with the governorship expect to spend a lot of time looking at ways to simplify and improve Iowa's tax system, he said.

'I think we are interested in making Iowa's tax code fairer and reducing the burden on Iowa taxpayers,” Hagenow said.

Two Democrats - Sen. Rob Hogg of Cedar Rapids and Rep. David Jacoby of Coralville - who attended the ITA forum expressed a willingness to work on tax reform as long as the changes didn't merely shift the burden or undercut revenue available to fund critical government programs.

'I think there is room for tax reform, I think that would be positive,” said Hogg, the Senate's new minority-party leader, although he did not favor merely cutting income tax rates across-the-board as an option.

He added that he hoped lawmakers could find bipartisan ground on tax policy and other issues where possible, but he also accepted the reality the Republicans will run the show at the Statehouse for the next two years.

'Republicans in the Legislature can do anything they choose to do. It's going to be incumbent on them to choose wisely,” Hogg said. 'If they decide to have Iowa become the next right-wing experimentation, if they want to go down an ideological path, they can do that.

'I hope they don't. I hope they govern from the middle. We don't want to replicate what Kansas has done.”

Jacoby said he hoped a comprehensive look at tax policy would include 'decoupling” agricultural and residential properties for taxing purposes. He also questioned whether lawmakers should revisit the 'backfill” issue from the 2013 property tax cut that requires lost revenue for local entities to be replaced with income tax revenue.

He noted he was not interested in 'robbing from the SAVE funds” - Secure an Advanced Vision for Education - that schools receive to finance water quality improvements.

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