• Provide a targeted penalty waiver through the creation of an expedited and streamlined reasonable cause penalty abatement process to taxpayers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic that eliminates the need for written requests; 
• Develop specific COVID-19 examples that qualify for reasonable cause abatement and share these examples with all telephone assistors through interim guidance; and
• Develop a dedicated telephone number or dedicated prompt for taxpayers or their advisors to call to request Coronavirus-related penalty relief.

As of this morning, a conference committee comprised of six legislators, three from both branches of the legislature and of both parties, continued to finalize details for a final budget for Fiscal Year 2021. The three budgets proposed by the Governor, Senate and House largely mirror each other totaling roughly $46 billion and do not call for new revenues or tax increases.

All of the budgets included the language relative to partnership audits, which would enable the Department of Revenue (DOR) to collect tax from partnerships or from individual partners in cases where the partnership accounts for the federal tax as a result of changes in federal partnership auditing rules in order to avoid significant revenue loss. They also included language that will accelerate sales tax collections from businesses that collect and remit more than $150,000 from sales taxes in a year and reportedly would collect $267 million for the state. These sections are likely to pass with the final budget, barring any unforeseen, last-minute changes.

We should know more details in the coming days and will provide that information to you once we have it.