2003 Senate Bill 870 ↩

Senate Roll Call 43: Passed

To exempt for five years a "qualified start-up business" from the obsolete properties tax which is levied in lieu of property tax on firms which have received an obsolete property rehabilitation exemption certificate (otherwise known as a property tax abatement). 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.