L.A. Council Pushes Ahead on Business Tax Simplification

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Los Angeles City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel and business groups are pushing to resolve unfinished issues on reforming L.A.’s costly and burdensome business tax.


Two years ago, the council passed a set of reforms that exempted all businesses with less than $100,000 in gross receipts from the business tax and cut business taxes 15 percent over five years for the rest of the city’s businesses. Also exempted temporarily were newly established businesses grossing less than $500,000.


But left on the table was a proposal to simplify the system, reducing the city’s whopping city’s 64 business tax categories to just 11. That proposal is finally working its way through the process and could come before the council early next year.


“One of the big gripes about the business tax besides the cost was its sheer complexity, with all these categories. With this reform, there would now be fewer categories for business owners and their accountants to worry about,” said Mel Kohn, a partner in the accounting firm Kirsch Kohn & Bridge and one of the point men on business tax reform for the Valley Industry and Commerce Association.


Equally anticipated is another reform that would make permanent the exemption for new businesses grossing less than $500,000.


Greuel, who chairs the L.A. City Council’s Ad-Hoc Business Tax Reform Committee, said these proposals are long overdue.


“The evidence is clear. When we make the business tax system simpler and less onerous, businesses stay, thrive, and expand in the City of Los Angeles,” Greuel said.


Business advocates are only hoping that this set of reforms won’t take seven years to win council approval like the last series of reforms did.



Dealing With Diesel


Hundreds of industrial and commercial facilities in the county and thousands throughout the state will have to start reporting emissions from diesel engines under proposed amendments to the state’s toxic hot spots regulation.


The proposal, which the state Air Resources Board unveiled this summer, would require facilities with multiple diesel engines including backup power generators to report diesel emissions to both the state board and their local air pollution control agency. In L.A. County, it’s the South Coast Air Quality Management District.


Facilities with multiple diesel engines near residences or schools would have to notify the public about the emissions and do a risk analysis of those emissions. Some may have to take additional steps to reduce diesel emissions.


Why the changes? New scientific data have emerged in recent years about the toxicity of diesel emissions at lower levels than previously thought. That led the air board to revamp its reporting requirements under the state’s 19-year-old toxic hot spots program, which is designed to monitor emissions deemed toxic at commercial, industrial and government facilities.


Thousands of facilities in Los Angeles County that already are required to report their toxic emissions would have to go back and catalog emissions from diesel sources. But the proposal also takes in many types of facilities that haven’t had to deal with the program before. Among these: business parks, telecommunications systems and commercial office towers. These entities either have fleets of diesel vehicles or have backup generators that run on diesel fuel.


These proposed changes, currently in draft form, are set to come before the board in November.



Form-Fitting Waste Lines


A major change in the documentation for generators and transporters of hazardous waste materials took effect last week.


The change, which impacts about 27,000 companies and agencies in Los Angeles County, is part of nationwide switch by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to standardized hazardous materials manifests that was designed to streamline transport across state lines.


The manifests are used by national, state and local authorities to track hazardous wastes; they also provide vital information in the event of an accident because they let first responders know what materials they are dealing with.


In L.A. County, a broad range of businesses that use hazardous materials will now have to use the new standardized forms, including auto repair shops, service stations, dry cleaners, heavy industry, hospitals and other medical establishments. Companies that specialize in the transport of hazardous waste will also be subject to the new requirements.


Essentially, the new manifest forms use standardized waste codes and add a number of reporting requirements. For generators, the biggest change will likely involve having to make an extra copy of the form to send to the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.


So far, the transition to the new forms appears to be going rather smoothly for one major transporter, Waste Management Inc. “We did have lots of advance warning, so we were able to change our computer tracking system and make other changes,” said Chuck White, director of regulatory affairs for Waste Management’s Western region.


But White did say that if a transporter were moving more than six specific types of hazardous materials, filling out the manifests would now be more complicated, since there is only room for six materials.


However, the biggest problem is that smaller hazardous waste generators such as independently owned auto repair shops may not know about the new forms.


Department of Toxic Substances Control officials said they sent out notices to each of the 123,000 entities in their statewide reporting database. “We hope we were able to reach everybody,” said department spokeswoman Carol Singleton.



Staff reporter Howard Fine can be reached at

[email protected]

or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 227.

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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