The Illinois Senate has advanced important legislation to protect at least 150 local high-paying jobs and the number of flights into and out of Champaign-Urbana, according to State Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet).
“This is a true bipartisan effort, the state’s airline industry was under attack by the Illinois Department of Revenue. The state of Illinois should be promoting job growth, however the Department of Revenue’s actions would have cost jobs in our area and imperiled the number of daily flights into and out of Champaign-Urbana. Today’s bipartisan action will protect those jobs and flights,” said Senator Rose.
House Bill 3902 reinstates a tax credit that affects the manufacturing and repair of some jets. The credit was initially passed in 2009, to keep Illinois competitive with neighboring states that already offered similar programs. Unfortunately, unrelated legislation unintentionally created a sunset for the credit in 2015. The affected businesses were not informed however until recently, when the Illinois Department of Revenue attempted to collect several years of sales taxes from businesses that had never been collected from customers.
House Bill 3902 puts the credit back into place and retroactively applies it back to 2015 when it unintentionally expired.
“I’m particularly pleased that we had a veto-proof majority in the House and Senate on this bill, because Governor Pritzker has vowed to veto this legislation. I would urge him to reconsider and to take into account the number of important high-paying jobs across the state of Illinois that this legislation will protect,” said Senator Rose. “For us locally, having Flightstar as a maintenance facility for American Eagle has helped increase the number of daily flights into and out of Champaign. We think that’s a great advantage and we don’t want to lose that over this ridiculous action by the Department of Revenue.”