Lawmakers are no closer to finding a solution to what they call an imbalance in the state’s taxing structure.

Their next step forward will be to look at the multitude of ideas that were discussed over the summer to find a solution that is capable of getting enough votes to be passed.

There are several ideas being passed around including restoring the state portion of the sales tax on food, with some sort of low-income tax credit, and putting sales taxes on services that aren’t already taxed.

It has also been suggested to change the state’s constitution that requires income taxes to exclusively fund education.

Legislative leaders are hoping to have a proposal finalized and to hold a special session before the end of the year. If they don’t it will be included with the 2020 session which is already populated with half the Senate on the ballot and all 75 House members.

On Thursday task force members talked about revoking some, if not all, of the sales tax exemptions currently in place in Utah. They also discussed adding sales taxes to these services.

Utah currently grants 89 sales tax exemptions, which totals about $1 billion in lost revenue annually.

Services that might see new imposed sales taxes include: accounting, legal services, veterinary services, self-storage, transfer of real estate, and non-profit health plans. Along with these, newer services like media streaming services and ridesharing.

Another option that was discussed was getting rid of sales tax and replacing it with either “value-added” tax that would require a tax to be paid at each level of production, or a “gross receipts” tax that would have businesses pay a tax on their gross revenues with no exclusions for business expenses.

There should be a final proposal put together on Oct. 22 to be presented later this year.