The Wyoming Legislature is considering two bills about sales taxes on the Wind River Reservation. One would return improperly collected online sales taxes to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes, and the other codifies that the state does not collect sales tax from non-tribal members on reservation land.
The two bills passed their committee votes and are headed to the Senate floor. Both drafts came out of the Select Committee on Tribal Relations and have been in the works for multiple years.
Online sales tax
SF 94 looks at how onlines sales taxes are assessed on the reservation and was a big focus for the committee during the interim. Tribal members are currently exempt from paying state sales taxes while on the reservation. But when it comes to ordering things online, getting that exemption requires filling out some paperwork and is easier said than done.
“ If you live in a rural area and you have an Amazon sale and they deliver your house in a UPS truck, right now the state collects sales tax on that, because Amazon doesn't know it's on the reservation,” said Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander) in a Senate Revenue Committee meeting on Feb. 5.
Wyoming Department of Revenue Administrator Bret Fanning said this current bill is an effort to create a more streamlined system to apply that exemption.
“ This was the solution to multiple years on trying to strike a balance between folks who give exemption certificates to online retailers and then folks who don't, for whatever valid reason,” he said.
The bill would take those improperly collected taxes and put them in what Fanning referred to as a “bucket,” which would then be returned to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes once they decide how they want to split the money.
But how to split those funds is “a little bit of a sticky wicket,” according to Case. He said that some tribal members believe it should be split proportionally to enrollment, while others argue it should be split 50-50.
Case emphasized that no other two tribal nations in the United States share a reservation, which is the case for the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes.
“ This is an act of Congress that forced two tribes to share the same reservation and have these difficulties that no other tribe faces,” he said.
Travis McNiven spoke on behalf of the Northern Arapaho Business Council at the Senate Revenue Committee meeting and said the council ”supports the efforts that have been done to get the bill to this point.” No one from the Eastern Shoshone Business Council or the Eastern Shoshone Tribe provided public comment.
At the last Select Committee on Tribal Relations meeting in Fort Washakie in October, members from both business councils provided comment on the bills but did not definitively state whether they were for or against the legislation.
Wind River Tax Commission Director Clarence Aragon said the commission is “in favor of a revenue-sharing agreement if it benefits the tribes” and that both business councils would need to pass a motion related to the agreement.
In the Senate Revenue Committee meeting, Fanning stressed the importance of making sure the state isn’t collecting sales tax from tribal members on the reservation, especially from a legal standpoint.
“There is a question if that could cause litigation in the future or not, and so this was an attempt to prevent that,” he said.
The bill passed with a 3-2 vote and is headed to the Senate floor.
Sales taxes for non-tribal members?
The Senate Revenue Committee also considered SF 93, which would ensure that the Wyoming Department of Revenue doesn’t collect sales taxes from non-tribal members on reservation land owned by one tribe.
According to Fanning, that’s just codifying what’s already happening on the ground.
“ My boss and my boss' predecessor and their predecessors before them have made the determination not to go on to the Wind River Indian Reservation and attempt to license those vendors or collect sales or lodging tax from them,” he said.
SF 93 passed the committee unanimously and is also headed to the Senate floor.
