GOP plans to help farmers doesn't all go to farmers. But it does cost a lot more

I was wondering what Republicans spent a couple of weeks cooking up to try to counter what Governor Evers wanted to do to help the state’s struggling farmers. So the WisGOPs released their plans yesterday, which seemed to have an odd focus when it came to solving the agricultural problem of low prices and increasing costs.

The package, which includes five bills as well as amendments to the two special session bills Evers called for during his address last month, aims to take on both short- and long-term challenges facing the ag industry.

In the short term, the package includes two provisions that would modify the state’s tax code to help farmers: one bill would create an up to $7,500 credit for property taxes levied against farms; another would expand the number of self-employed individuals could subtract from their income taxes for costs stemming from health insurance.

Tax cuts? Isn’t one of the challenges that farmers HAVE NO INCOME TO CUT? And that mega-farms don't need as much per unit to get by because of their large scales?

How does a tax cut make these guys profitable?

Then it got more ridiculous, as the Wisconsin State Journal told us today. The price tag and further analysis of the bills came back as the Assembly’s Agriculture Committee was jamming through a public hearing on the bills, and it’s a lot more costly than the $8.5 million that Evers' proposals cost, while not doing as much for added services.

Farmers would be able to apply the tax credit to up to 66% of property taxes on buildings "exclusively used for farming." The credit would be capped at $7,500, and claimants would have to make at least $35,000 in annual farm income to be eligible.

At a committee meeting Tuesday, Rep. Travis Tranel, R- Cuba City, estimated the credit, which would sunset in three years, to cost $27 million. He pointed to the state's recently announced added tax revenue as a potential source of funding.

The state certainly has the money to be able to do that in the short term. And I suppose most legitimate farms are going to sell more than $35,000 in product, so maybe it’s good to have a lower limit to not include people like Madison developer Terrance Wall, who got a farmer in 2009 to put in a pumpkin patch on a part of 2 acres of undeveloped land in order to make it “agricultural” in 2009, and got his assessment reduced by nearly $1 million.

But still, farmers already get quite a bit of property tax breaks as it is, and making the tax credit refundable means that some people may get a cash handout if the credit is larger than what they pay in state taxes.

And the health insurance tax break is even more absurd. It’s not just for farmers, but instead can be applied to most business owners.

This bill modifies the income tax subtraction for amounts paid for medical care insurance by self-employed individuals. Under current law, the subtraction may not exceed the individual's net earnings from a trade or business that are taxable by Wisconsin. Under the bill, the subtraction may not exceed the individual's wages, salary, tips, unearned income, and net earnings from a trade or business that are taxable by Wisconsin.

The bill similarly modifies the provision under current law that prorates the subtraction for self-employed nonresidents and part-year residents based on the percentage of the individual's net earnings from a trade or business taxable by Wisconsin to total net earnings from a trade or business. Under the bill, the subtraction is prorated based on the percentage of the individual's wages, salary, tips, unearned income, and net earnings from a trade or business that are taxable by Wisconsin to total wages, salary, tips, unearned income, and net earnings from a trade or business.

As the AP's Scott Bauer noted, most of this tax break won't go to farmers.

The bill that would allow farmers to deduct the cost of health insurance from their income taxes would save them an estimated $2.5 million a year

It would save other sole proprietors who are not farmers about $7 million a year

That's according to bill sponsor @RepAmy31

— Scott Bauer (@sbauerAP) February 11, 2020

I don’t even see any limitations for income, so someone whose business is making multi-millions can still get a nice writeoff for paying for their own health insurance costs.

Let me also go back and talk about a few other bills in the GOP’s package for farmers, which seem to be in the category of “inaction through studies.”

The remaining three bills call on the UW System to require: UW-Madison to conduct a study on developing an agricultural science and technology program; require the System’s Board of Regents to review on current agriculture programs; and allocate $1 million for the Board of Regents to spend on a state specialist in agricultural research.

After seeing this added bureaucracy and work at the UW System, the Wispolitics story has this hilarious quote from an Assembly Republican.

…Rep. Tyler August said some Evers’ measures to help farmers “take us in the wrong direction with simply just adding a bunch of government employees.”

“They need actual help, they don’t need more government bureaucrats,” the Lake Geneva Republican said.

Hey Tyler, ALL YOU'RE DOING IS TRADING DATCP STATE BUREAUCRATS FOR UW BUREAUCRATS. What a pathetic reason to try to be different than Evers on the issue, although it's a nice way to take more control over what the UW does, so maybe that's what GOPs like about it.

It’s all buzzwords and BS with these clowns, and it’s amazing that some people still buy it. Just like the GOP’s claims of “conservative, low spending” are BS. To help deal with the struggles of farmers, they want to spend 4 times as much as Evers for services that likely will do less for the farmers that are in need, and a sizable amount of the money won't even go to farmers at all!

But par for the course with this crew. No wonder why they’re trying to jam this through less than a day after it gets announced. It might help a bit, but there are a lot of better ways to deal with these problems, and I'm betting WisGOP doesn't want people to have the time to think deeply about what they're NOT doing.