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Kansas is poised to expand an earnings tax credit for items and providers bought from corporations and nonprofits using disabled workers, a yr after a debate over how a lot the state ought to buck a nationwide pattern towards paying these workers under the minimal wage.
A invoice permitted by the Legislature this week with broad bipartisan assist would enhance the full tax credit accessible from $5 million a yr to $8 million. It additionally would create a brand new, $1 million program for nonprofit teams operating vocational packages often called sheltered workshops to assist them begin paying workers a minimum of the federal minimal wage of $7.25 an hour.
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The tax credit had beforehand solely coated purchases from employers paying a minimum of the minimal wage, and lawmakers reviewed it final yr as a result of it was set to expire firstly of this yr.
It’s the Legislature’s newest try to expand the tax credit.
Their first proposal would have allowed nonprofit teams with sheltered workshops to kind separate divisions paying a minimum of the minimal wage so that folks or companies shopping for from these divisions might declare the tax credit. Backers noticed it as a possibility to expand the attain of the tax credit and subsequently employment alternatives for disabled workers.
Kansas is set to approve new laws to enhance tax credit for hiring disabled folks.
But it drew sturdy opposition from disabled rights teams arguing that it might encourage wages under the minimal wage — a vestige of decades-old views of disabled folks as incapable of doing jobs exterior such packages.
The compromise final yr was to begin the grant program as an alternative. However, the Republican-controlled Legislature folded it into an omnibus tax-cut invoice with provisions opposed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, and he or she vetoed it.
The tax credit then expired firstly of this yr, however this yr’s invoice is written so that folks can nonetheless declare the tax credit once they file their 2023 returns.
“It’s a good compromise,” stated Neil Romano, a member of the National Council on Disability, and former head of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. “It moves us towards where we want to be.”
Kelly hasn’t stated publicly whether or not she’s going to signal the invoice, however she sometimes has when a measure has near-universal assist.
Employers nationally are more and more transferring away from paying under the minimal wage, U.S. authorities knowledge exhibits. Paying under the minimal wage requires a Department of Labor certificates, and a U.S. Government Accountability Office report final yr stated there have been 2,750 American employers with certificates in 2014, whereas a web based database listed 834 as of Jan. 1, a drop of 70%. In Kansas, 17 teams have them.
Fourteen states ban below-minimum-wage jobs for disabled workers, with Virginia enacting a regulation final yr, in accordance to the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which promotes inclusive job insurance policies.
In Kansas, there stays “considerable work to be done” to transfer away from below-minimum-wage jobs, stated Sara Hart Weir, govt director of the Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities.
But, she added, “This is a step in the right direction.”
Rocky Nichols, govt director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, stated it is good that the tax credit is again and the state is signaling that it needs to transfer away from sheltered workshops by way of the grant program.
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But he additionally stated he worries the measure is not particular sufficient about how and when teams should transition away from paying under the minimal wage.
“We don’t want to see it turn into just kind of a slush fund for sheltered workshops,” he stated.
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