Potential market value exclusion aims to lower child care costs

Rep. Danny Nadeau (R-Rogers) is trying to alleviate the financial burden for licensed in-home child care providers.

He sponsors HF633 that would establish a 50% market value exclusion for in-home family day care or group family day care providers.

“I'm trying to provide some relief for in-home family care providers,” said Nadeau. “This bill is a very simple, common-sense bill that I hope helps stabilize in-home family child care providers.”

The House Children and Families Finance and Policy Committee on a split-voice vote approved the bill, as amended, Tuesday and moved it to the House Taxes Committee.

Rep. Nolan West (R-Blaine), who chairs the committee, said, “One thing we are going to focus on in this committee is lowering costs. One beautiful thing about this bill is it directly lowers costs of child care. That's a big deal. It's hard to lower the cost of child care.”

No fiscal note was provided.

Samantha Memmen, a day care provider in Bloomington, wrote a letter in support of the bill.

“A tax reduction and credit for daycare providers would be essential to keeping businesses like mine up and running, in addition to keeping costs lower for families who pay for child daycare services. Currently, I pay over $1,000 a month on state taxes. A reduction or credit of my taxes would go a long way to keeping my business affordable.”

Rep. Nathan Coulter (DFL-Bloomington) agreed the state needs to help family child care providers but doesn’t think giving this exclusion is the best way forward.

Homes receiving the exclusion must be a residential homestead or the portion of an agricultural homestead consisting of the house, garage and surrounding 1 acre of land. Properties receiving this exclusion would not be eligible for other existing homestead exclusions.