JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri General Assembly voted Sept. 16 to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s earlier veto, thus passing a bill that creates sales tax exemptions for certain laundry and drycleaning businesses in the state.
Senate Bill No. 20, passed by the Republican-led Legislature but vetoed by the Democratic governor in July, makes certain laundries and dry cleaners in the state exempt from paying state and local sales and use tax on their purchases of machinery, utilities, chemicals and other “ingredients” used to treat, clean and sanitize textiles.
The votes to override were 28-4 in the Senate and 110-46 in the House of Representatives.
The exemptions are limited to laundries and dry cleaners that process at least 500 pounds per hour and 60,000 pounds per week.
For the second straight year, Nixon had vetoed the tax break for large laundry and drycleaning businesses, saying it represented an unfair expansion of existing tax breaks for manufacturers. In his veto letter, the governor projected that such a sales tax exemption would cost the state $4 million in lost state and local revenues.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lee’s Summit, argued that commercial laundries should not be taxed both on supplies needed to operate the business and on the final product. Commercial laundries held this tax exemption for years until a court decided the rule did not apply to the businesses, he says.
RELATED: Gov. Vetoes Tax Break for Dry Cleaners, posted July 27, 2015
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