House addresses Mississippi post-Roe challenges with tax credits

A Home committee handed a invoice late Wednesday that may create or broaden eight tax credit aimed toward serving to look after poor households, moms and youngsters in wake of Mississippi’s ban on abortions.

“That is designed to assist newly pregnant girls and struggling households,” Home Methods and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, informed members of his committee. “…Most are present (tax credit score applications) that we’re increasing, however a pair are new.”

Lamar stated the tax credit, for each companies and people, can be “dollar-for-dollar” for taxpayers who donate to certified charities, well being facilities and houses or write off little one care or adoption bills. However among the applications would restrict the credit to 50% of tax legal responsibility, and all are capped by complete quantities lawmakers allocate to them.

The invoice got here from Home Speaker Philip Gunn’s “Fee on Life,” which was created in June 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s ruling on a Mississippi case that overturned Roe vs. Wade abortion rights. Gunn stated the ruling would convey “new challenges” for Mississippi to ensure “those that are born have the assets they want.”

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann additionally created a choose committee of lawmakers — who held public hearings within the fall — to assist information post-Roe insurance policies in a state already struggling to supply healthcare. Gunn’s committee, nonetheless, has met in non-public and scant particulars about its work have been made public.

READ MORE: Six months after Dobbs ruling, the work of Gunn’s ‘Fee on Life’ stays a thriller

Gunn and Lamar co-authored Home Invoice 1671 and its tax credit. The invoice, which now heads to the total Home chamber for a vote, would:

• Create a toddler care expense tax credit score, just like the federal one, permitting as much as 50% of the quantity of the federal revenue tax credit score claimed for people and {couples} making lower than $50,000 a yr.

• Enhance the whole quantity of tax credit for these donating to being pregnant assets facilities from $3.5 million a yr to $10 million.

• Enhance the utmost adoption expense tax credit score for households from $5,000 to $10,000.

• Enhance tax credit of as much as $400 for a person and $800 for a pair donating to certified charitable and foster care organizations to as much as 50% of tax legal responsibility, together with advert valorem taxes.

• Enhance the whole tax credit out there for the “Mississippi Youngsters’s Promise Act” — donations to certified charities that assist youngsters — from $18 million to $24 million.

• Create tax credit, as much as 50% of a tax legal responsibility, for these donating to transitional houses, that assist folks ageing out of foster care, homeless folks beneath 25, homeless households and/or homeless or referred pregnant ladies.

• Create new well being care tax credit of $3 million for companies and $1 million for people for these those that donate to nonprofits that present well being care to low-income folks.

• Create tax credit totaling $1 million for any nonprofit “buying, warehousing and delivering meals on to meals pantries or soup kitchens in additional than 5 Mississippi counties on a month-to-month foundation.”

READ MORE: Republicans vowed a sturdy post-Roe agenda. Right here’s the way it’s going.