October 24, 2007 - The Taxpayers Research Institute of Missouri, a division of Associated Industries of Missouri, contacted the Missouri Department of Revenue today regarding the simplified credit process for sales of energy sources and water on behalf of Missouri utility vendors. The simplified process was to have expired October 28, 2007.Following our contact with the Department, late this afternoon the DOR issued an extension of this credit process until January 31, 2008. They also stated this deadline will NOT be extended. An extension of this simplified process was important in helping utility companies and the DOR avoid thousands of refund requests and amended sales tax returns that would have been required to properly account for sales of utilities that are entitled to exemption from state and local use tax and state sales tax under the AIM/TRIM Manufacturing Inputs Exemption in SB 30. The simplified process furthers the Department of Revenue's stated goal of allowing as many manufacturers as possible to take full advantage of the new exemption without delay while minimizing paperwork as much as possible for the sellers for the sellers of the exempt items.
Utility vendors are in a unique situation in that all manufacturers obtain energy from a relatively small number of utility providers in the state, making the concentration of exempt transactions much higher than for other vendors. In other words, all utility companies will be affected by the exemption and every manufacturer obtains power from one of the utility companies. The process of receiving and tracking exemption certificates and making the necessary bookkeeping adjustments to charge only the local tax is an overwhelming task, especially since many manufacturers are just now discovering they are entitled to the AIM/TRIM exemption. As they provide exemption certificates to their utility vendors, all bills after August 28, 2007 will be affected by the new exemption and only local sales tax will be charged on the appropriate manufacturing percentage as determined by the manufacturer. If a manufacturer uses at least 76% of the energy purchased for one of the exempt processes in SB 30 (manufacturing, mining, producing, compounding, processing a product), all of their utility purchases for that facility will be subject to local sales tax only under the AIM/TRIM Manufacturing Inputs Exemption.
AIM/TRIM applauds the Missouri Department of Revenue and its leadership, particularly Director of Revenue Trish Vincent and Deputy Director of Revenue Lowell Pearson for implementing the AIM/TRIM Manufacturing Inputs Exemption in a fair and reasonable manner that upholds the spirit of the exemption: to make Missouri manufacturers more competitive with manufacturers in other states.
You may find the new extension at the top of the list of SB 30 documents at the top of this page.
