A Citizen’s Guide

From Dillon in Juneau:

The Senate is delayed until 4 p.m. Take your pick for the reason: the drafters are still working on amendments or votes are shifting on the different issues. There’s reportedly some heavy browbeating going on by the Senate leadership on some of the amendments.

There are 12 amendments, which will mostly be offered by the Democrats. The minority Republicans have a couple, too. Don’t expect a lot of debate.

Not all of the amendments may be offered, but we can expect these to be among them:

• Re-insert the standard deduction on legacy fields with a three-year sunset.

• Tweak the exploration investment credits provision.

• Allow a lower tax rate on natural gas produced for instate use.

• Alter the progressivity surcharge to move from 0.4 percentage points to 0.5 percentage points once oil reached $90 a barrel.

• Extend the statue of limitations on tax assessment and amended return filings from four to six years.

• Close loopholes in lease expenditure language to stop oil companies from claiming excessive deductions at low oil prices.

• Remove a sunset provision on the measure allowing the administration to hire exempt auditors.

• Reduce the retroactivity of the bill from six months to three or less.

There are a couple more those in power won’t share with me, but I’m pretty confident the list above covers the main ones.

The Senate is expected to move pretty quickly. The House is not scheduled to go into session until Friday at 9 a.m., though. That means there’s no chance for conference committee. It’s concurrence or nothing at this point.