COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Gov. Mark Sanford
says he'll try to learn from problems facing some people in Oklahoma
after that state shelled out tax rebates - and gave some people income
tax headaches.
When Sanford unveiled his budget plan last month, he said the state
was flush enough with cash to give taxpayers a $151 million tax rebate
as part of a plan to control government spending. On Friday, with news
the state's revenues are growing faster than expected, Sanford
challenged legislators to put $237 million more into "dividends" for
taxpayers that would amount to about $400 per family.
Reporting that kind of government giving on tax returns has become a
problem in Oklahoma, which used $92 million in a rainy day surplus to
give taxpayers income tax rebates. Most taxpayers received the rebates -
$45 for single people and $90 for married couples - just in time for the
Christmas shopping season.
It's tax season now and the rebates are creating an unintended
headache for some people.
That's because the Internal Revenue Service will require people who
may be accustomed to filing short paper tax forms, including the
1040-EZ, to use the IRS's longer and more complicated 1040 form.
The shorter forms don't have a place to report the rebate checks as
income. People who received the money must report the income on the
federal tax forms.
It's less of a hassle for people using electronic forms or tax
preparers.
Sanford said Thursday he hadn't heard of Oklahoma's problems, first
reported Tuesday in the Tulsa World. "Obviously this afternoon I'm going
to become familiar with it," Sanford said.
"I would say there are wrinkles often times in any public policy,"
Sanford said. "The question is can things be done to fix it. Whatever
caused things to go wrong in Oklahoma, I would bet that we could learn
from that, rectify it and have a program that would work in South
Carolina."
Sanford didn't commit to a specific way of issuing rebates when he
rolled out his budget. Gubernatorial spokesman Joel Sawyer said "if the
Legislature did agree with our idea we would look for a way to do this
whereby we would avoid problems experienced by other states."
For now, legislators in a rush to approve property tax breaks have
spent little time on Sanford's tax rebate idea.
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Cooper, R-Piedmont, said
Sanford's rebates aren't part of the budget that his committee begins
discussing next week. If the rebates are discussed, it would be tough to
come up with a way to deal with the problem Oklahomans face in reporting
the rebates on federal returns.
"I'm at a loss to see how you get around IRS rules on that," Cooper
said.
With Republican Sanford and the GOP-controlled House's 124 seats up
for election this year, the proposal has fostered criticism.
For instance, the campaigns of Sanford's GOP primary opponent and
Democratic challengers have called it an effort to buy votes or an
election-year gimmick. Sanford says there's nothing political about the
rebate plan.
