The biodiesel tax incentive was left out of the latest Congressional tax reform bills, but senators are working separate legislation to extend the credit.
Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and John Thune of South Dakota are leading the effort. Grant Kimberley, executive director of the Iowa Biodiesel Board, says he hopes they’ll offer the bill before 2018 arrives.
“Senators were given assurances there would be tax extenders added to some of the end-of-the-year budget bills that have to go through by the end of the year or the early part of next year,” Kimberley says. “That’s what we’re working on and hopefully that will happen.” He says it’s disappointing Congress keeps waiting until the end of the year to make decisions on much-needed tax incentives like the biodiesel credit.
“We’ve had a lot of growth and we’ve had success but it’s been difficult because there have been years where the credit is on again, off again,” Kimberley says. “It’s been six out of the last nine years we’ve had it expire and then be reinstated. It’s hard to make business investments when you have this on again, off again incentive.” Kimberley says the measure the senators are putting together would make the biodiesel incentive a credit for producers rather than blenders.
“The reason being is that we’ve seen significant volumes of imported biodiesel coming into the country,” he says. “It just makes good policy sense to make sure these kinds of credits really go toward domestic production.” Kimberley says the senators believe trying to move the biodiesel tax incentive in a separate measure is better than holding it up in amendments that could have been stripped from the overall tax reform legislation.
(Thanks to Jerry Oster, WNAX, Yankton)