Senators move to give teachers state tax break

 Action would cover supplies they buy

By HOWARD FISCHER
TRIBUNE
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State senators took the first steps Thursday to give teachers a tax break — a break the state’s largest teacher organization says it doesn’t want.
   The legislation would let teachers reduce their state income tax liability by up to $250 a year for the classroom supplies they bought with their own cash.
   The credits would be available beginning with tax returns filed next spring.
   But the measure, which now goes to the full Senate, is drawing the ire of the Arizona Education Association.
   "We don’t want teachers to have to spend their own money to buy supplies,’’ said John Wright, the association’s president. He said putting a tax credit on the books essentially recognizes — and makes part of state policy — the idea that teachers should be paying for classroom needs.
   Wright said the association wants to kill this bill and replace it with an actual appropriation of state dollars to schools, funds that would have to be spent on supplies.
   But Sen. Dean Martin, RPhoenix, sponsor of SB1083, suggested the organization is out of touch with its members. "Teachers, by and large individually, are very much in favor of this,’’ he said.
   Martin said that, if nothing else, enacting tax credits will give Arizonans some idea of how much teachers spend out of their own pockets on classroom supplies.
   The National Education Association, in a 2003 report, pegged that figure at an average of $443 a year.
   Teachers already are entitled to a $250 deduction for classroom supplies on their federal tax returns.
   Legislative staffers estimate that if every public school teacher in the state took the maximum credit it would cut state revenue close to $12.7 million.