Tax commission delivers business breaks

Nevada businesses got a break last week from the Nevada Tax Commission, which decided to give businesses extra time to pay the state's new taxes.

The commission decided to waive penalties for late payment on the modified business tax, the modified business tax for financial institutions and the live entertainment tax as long as they are paid by June 1.

The taxes, which were implemented at the start of the year, are due quarterly.

"We've been getting responses from confused taxpayers," said Barbara Smith- Campbell, the commission's chair and controller, Mandalay Development.

"We felt it was important to give some leniency to first time taxpayers.

There is tremendous growth at the tax department and none of this is the taxpayer's responsibility."

Smith-Campbell said the state's taxpayers would be better served if the department spent the next few months educating businesses rather than figuring out penalties for late payments.

"The governor's office does feel it's important for us to be proactive to educate taxpayers," she said.

Businesses already have until July 1 to remit payment for the new $100 annual business license fee, said Chuck Chinnock, executive director of the tax department.

The business license was the focus of much of the commission's meeting last week, when the panel debated whether to exempt exhibitors at crafts fairs and trade shows in the state.

The commission heard testimony from officials of the convention authorities of Las Vegas and Reno-Sparks that the fee would deter many exhibitors and hurt the state's trade show business.

Lynn Thompson, general manger of the Reno-Sparks Convention Center, said the center relies on such trade shows for 30 percent of its revenues.

Luke Puschnig, the Las Vegas convention center's attorney, suggested several ways the commission could exempt the exhibitors from the fee, but Smith- Campbell said that if the commission followed them they would be dangerously close to creating policy rather than crafting regulations.

She and Commissioner Joan Lambert also argued that an exemption from the fee would give an advantage to out-of-state exhibitors because most Nevada-based exhibitors will be pay the fee anyway as a requirement for doing business in the state.

In the end, the panel reached a compromise designed to protect the smaller crafts makers for which $100 fee would be onerous.

Home-based businesses making less than $22,000 a year are exempt from the business license fee as long as they don't rent or lease property outside the home.

The commission amended the regulation so that they would continue to be exempt from the fee even if they rent exhibit space for a brief period of time.