Closing the Door on Public Tax Hearings?

Sunshine is the best disinfectant. But the Nevada Tax Commission appears to think some maladies should be allowed to fester in the dark. That's the take the Review-Journal's Erin Neff has on the news that pending legislation would allow businesses to request a closed hearing on tax appeals.

The bill would still require the Commission to take a public vote at the end of these private hearings, but Neff fears (rightly) that the meaning of the vote would likely be difficult for the public to interpret in the absence of basic facts about the content of the hearing:

[S]imply permitting the commission to vote in public may not necessarily give the public more information. It seems the commission could easily use codes that would make it difficult for the public to understand their actions.Nevada's tax code has nothing on the federal mess, but it still has enough numbers representing different classifications of businesses to send even the most knowledgeable followers of tax policy scrambling for the key.

The rationale given for pulling the shades down on Nevada tax appeals is the same old story we've heard before:

The commission said closed hearings were necessary to protect trade secrets or proprietary information from getting into the hands of competitors.

But Neff has exactly the right response:

Has the agency never seen a Securities and Exchange Commission filing? Everything from a company's taxpayer identification number to every parcel of land it owns and all capital and ongoing expenses seem to be readily available to the public.

For more background on this issue, check out this long report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on the broad topic of corporate tax disclosure. For Nevada-specific information, check out ITEP's policy brief on this topic.