House Bill 1129

Chair's Name: Larry O’Neal

Committee: Ways & Means

House Sponsor: Jeff Lewis

The purpose of HB 1129 is to promote and develop tourism attractions in Georgia which will preserve and create jobs and tax revenues for the support of public services provided by the state.  The bill provides that companies seeking to undertake a tourism attraction project may be granted a sales and use tax refund for the incremental state and local sales taxes generated by the approved company and arising at the tourism attraction.  The total refund allowed to the company over a 10 year term is equal to the lesser of the total amount of sales tax liability of the company or 25% of the approved costs for the tourism attraction project.  “Tourism attractions” may include cultural or historic sites, recreation or entertainment facilities, areas of natural phenomenon or beauty, convention hotels and conference centers, race tracks, golf facilities, marinas and water parks, or entertainment destination centers designed to attract tourists to Georgia.  

The bill provides for the commissioner of economic development to establish standards for the filing of applications for tourism attraction projects by administrative regulations, and specifies what must be included in applications filed with this department.  Approval may be granted if the project shall have approved costs in excess of $25 million for new attractions or $10 million for additions to existing attractions, have a significant and positive economic impact on Georgia, produce sufficient revenues and public demand to be operating and open to the public for a minimum of 120 days per year, and not adversely affect existing employment in Georgia.

This committee substitute comes to the Floor under the Structured Rule.

Chairman O’Neal’s Opinion of the legislation:

By encouraging the development of tourist attractions, this bill serves as an exciting new economic development tool that significantly expands the revenue base at no initial cost to the budget. It also has the potential to create many new jobs for Georgians.

Further Action

The House agreed to the Senate Substitute which actually had no changes and was mistakenly reported as a substitute.