2003 Senate Bill 862 ↩

Senate Roll Call 38: Passed

To exempt for five years a "qualified start-up business" from any single business tax (SBT) liability in a year in which it does not make a profit. (Note: The SBT is a tax on the value added by a firm in producing a product, which means that a firm may owe SBT tax even though it makes no profit.) A "qualified start-up business" is defined as a firm that has fewer than 25 full-time equivalent employees, has annual sales of less than $1 million, has research and development expenses that make up at least 15-percent of its annual expenses, is not publicly traded, and did not have net income for two consecutive tax years. This does not necessarily apply only to new firms, and the proposed five year exemption is not necessarily the firm's first five years of operation.