By Gene Meyer
February 2, 2010

(KansasReporter) TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas Revenue Secretary Joan Wagnon said Tuesday that she would be willing to support the elimination of a controversial proposed $25 filing fee for state income taxes.

Wagnon last month proposed requiring Kansans who file state income taxes on traditional paper returns, which are now free, to pay a $25 filing fee to help the department of Department of Revenue reach an $860,000 cost cutting target.

The proposed fees would have applied to slightly less than a third of Kansas' approximately 1.2 million filing households, Wagnon said. Electronic filers would not be required to pay the fee because those returns can be processed far more efficiently with a relative handful of Kansas revenue workers, Wagnon said.

However, the plan drew howls of protest from organizations such as AARP Kansas and the Kansas Area Agencies on Aging Association, as well as scores of individual taxpayers, who said the proposed fee would be an excessive and regressive user fee for many older taxpayers and those low-income, minority and single-parent households who cannot afford to have professional preparers fill out and electronically file tax forms for them.

Wagnon told House Taxation committee members Tuesday that she would support amendments to her proposal that would eliminate the fee for approximately 144,000 taxpayers using Kansas-designed paper forms. But about 349,000 filers who use non-standard paper forms printed by commercial preparers or that are printouts from home software kits would still pay because those are the ones with the highest processing costs.