With Idaho homeowners, counties and school districts still struggling to recover from the impacts of the Great Recession, shifting or eliminating $140 million in tax revenue — most of it from Idaho’s largest businesses and corporations — doesn’t seem like a sound idea.

It appears the Idaho Legislature agrees as it considers a compromise that would eliminate the personal property tax for 90 percent of Idaho’s businesses.

Labeled as “time-consuming and burdensome” by the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, elimination of the personal property tax has been a goal for years.

If a bill largely drafted by the Idaho Association of Counties gets approved this session, this “scourge of small-business owners,” as labeled by IACI, will be gone for small businesses.

And the compromise to eliminate the tax for small businesses in Idaho seems to have traction. Tuesday the House Revenue and Taxation Committee unanimously approved the plan.

“We have tried to come up with something that we felt could make it through both bodies, and hopefully the governor will sign,” Committee Chairman Gary Collins, R-Nampa, told the Idaho Statesman. “Depending on whose figures you look at, almost 90 percent of the businesses will be relieved of the personal property tax, and I see that as a very good thing.”

We agree.

House Bill 315 exempts new purchases with an acquisition price of $3,000 or less and the first $100,000 worth of business equipment and machinery owned by every business in the state — in each county where they operate. It will not bring a huge tax break to corporate entities like Simplot, but it will give large companies some relief while sparing small businesses the hassle of doing annual inventories and filling out paperwork.

The price tag in reduced revenue is $20 million statewide.

Counties, even ones like Power and Caribou that rely heavily on personal property taxes to fund budgets in all their taxing districts, say they can live with this reduction.

Had a full repeal been put into effect, Power and Caribou counties would have lost about 45 percent of their total tax revenue. That means every taxing district in those counties — from school districts to cemetery districts — would have had to slash budgets by nearly half or try to shift more property tax burden onto homeowners.

Bannock County would have been looking at a 10 percent loss of revenue for all its taxing districts.

The largest business operations in these counties are not going to realize a huge tax decrease if House Bill 315 becomes law.

Power County’s five largest personal property taxpayers are the J.R. Simplot Co., $1.72 million; Lamb-Weston, owned by Conagra, $586,899; Chevron USA, $51,207; Ridgeline Energy, $48,272; and CG Power Solutions USA, $47,412.

Simplot is also the top personal property taxpayer in Bingham County at $441,533 and the third largest in Caribou at $377,191.

Bannock County’s top personal property taxpayers are: Heinz, $746,915; ON Semiconductor, $697,581; General Electric Capital Corp., $303,525; Portneuf Medical Center, $274,779; and G&E HC Reit II, $208,535.

There are 2,232 businesses paying personal property tax in Bannock County and the median amount paid is $135.48. The vast majority of them will be off the hook if the exemption approved by the House committee continues to win legislative approval.

Idaho can afford to give small businesses a break from this time-consuming tax requirement.

But this doesn’t satisfy IACI Executive Director Alex LaBeau, who has gone on the record to say his group will continue to push exemptions for all businesses.

Such a plan, phased in over time, was already passed by the Legislature in 2006, but it was tied to state growth in the economy. That growth didn’t come.

IACI will argue the tax itself is partially responsible for Idaho’s economic doldrums. If 90 percent of Idaho businesses are out of the loop, IACI could face an uphill battle convincing Idahoans this tax is holding back economic growth.