REXBURG—In a BYU-Idaho interview Sen. Doug Ricks, (R) district 34, shared his experience at the 2026 legislative session. He said, this year started with revenue shortfall because of the significant tax cuts made last year between the state legislature and President Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
“We ended up conforming to [the bill], complying 100% for individual taxes and things, the benefits that were there.” Ricks said, “But there was a cost to Idaho's budget on that, about $155 million, we estimate.” (1:26)
Ricks is interested in helping the people in District 34, which is Madison County. It took a couple of weeks into the session to understand the full impact of the tax policy.
“We didn't want to shortchange Idahoans. We want to make sure that they get those benefits.” (2:23)
Ricks helped sponsor the tax compliance bill, House Bill 559, from the senate side. After a couple of weeks working with house colleagues, they passed their first bill of the session.
They prepared more than one thousand bills over the session but ended up passing around 350 bills.
Not every bill had to do with taxes. Some of those bills included: HB 752, which requires people to use public restrooms which correspond with their birth gender, HB 583 about short-term rentals and SB 1224, which would penalize drivers who stay in the left lane on a highway too long.
Ricks worked on SB 1350, which is about cash rounding considering the penny shortage. In calculated sales tax the question is do you round up or down?
“The bill that I carried talks about that, it's kind of common-sense rounding. If your transaction ends in one and two, you round down to zero.” Ricks said, “If it's three or four, you round up to the nearest nickel.” (22:00)
To learn more about the bills of the 2026 legislative session, go to legislature.idaho.gov.