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Minnesota farm machinery repair and warehouse taxes repealed

March 25, 2014

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John Mages and Sen. Torrey Westrom. — One of the issues John Mages, a corn farmer in Belgrade and chair of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association’s government relations committee, and Sen. Torrey Westrom talked about a couple weeks ago at the state capitol was repealing the Minnesota farm machinery repair tax.

It took a little longer than expected. And, of course, it included some political drama near the end of the process. But the Minnesota legislature finally repealed new taxes it enacted last session on farm machinery repairs and warehouse storage.

The bill, which includes several other tax relief provisions outside of the agriculture sector, was passed by the Minnesota House and Senate on Friday and signed by Governor Dayton not long after.

The new 7 percent tax on farm machinery repairs, originally enacted on July 1, 2013, will go away on April 1 of this year. Unfortunately, the repeal is not retroactive, meaning if you already paid the extra tax on repairs between July 1 and now, and kept your receipts, you will not get a refund.

The warehouse storage tax was set to go into effect on April 1, 2014 and would have hurt farmers who store ag inputs like fertilizer.

A gift tax enacted last session also was repealed.