Hughes: Irrigation tax likely to stall

Thursday, January 18, 2018

McCOOK, Neb. — District 44 State Sen. Dan Hughes has been receiving emails from constituents concerned with a bill introduced at the state level that would impose a one-cent annual tax for every 10 gallons of water used to irrigate agricultural and horticultural land. The tax burden the bill would implement is so massive Sen. Hughes said he isn’t concerned about it advancing.

The bill, LB 1022, was introduced by District 22 Sen. Paul Schumacher.

“Sen. Schumacher, for some reason, he thinks farmers aren’t taxed enough I guess,” said Sen. Hughes this morning during his weekly legislative conference call with the McCook Area Chamber of Commerce.

Complaints from Nebraska’s ag community pertaining to an excessive property tax burden have never been an issue for Sen. Schumacher, who is term-limited out according to Sen. Hughes.

“He’s also introduced a bill to remove all the tax exemptions on farm inputs. So, we’ll start paying sales tax on tractors and fertilizer, seed corn, as well as irrigation water [if the bill were to become law]. This is Sen. Schumacher’s last year, he is term-limited out, so he is more or less just putting everything out there that he’s been thinking about. I like Sen. Schumacher, I mean he is a very smart guy, he’s the guy that thinks outside the box. He’s always trying to raise revenue for the state and he certainly understands we have an awful lot of government for no more people than we have,” said Sen. Hughes.

Sen. Hughes said he wasn’t all that concerned about LB 1022 becoming law, especially given the massive tax burden it would create.

“It’s one penny for every 10 gallons you pump. It’s a significant, significant number if you’re an irrigator,” he said.

Nebraska applied 6.7 million acre-feet of water to irrigated land in 2008, according to a 2007 report from the Department of Agriculture. A single acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons.

LB 1022 was referred to the Revenue Committee Thursday.

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  • Combine the Upper, Middle and Lower NRD’s into just one unit. That would save administrative costs, facility costs, utilities and reduce costs for all the board members. The savings would reduce taxes.

    -- Posted by dennis on Thu, Jan 18, 2018, at 3:42 PM
  • by cutting the expenses of he NRD's by 50% you would save approximately 1% of your property tax.

    Conversely, by cutting expenses of our schools by 5% you could save about 3.4% on your property taxes.

    -- Posted by quick13 on Mon, Jan 22, 2018, at 2:05 PM
  • Q, I agree that several of our small schools need to consolidate and we would save a lot

    -- Posted by dennis on Tue, Jan 23, 2018, at 4:02 PM
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