Historic week in Columbia.
South Carolina legislators have taken numerous actions this year to reduce tax and regulatory costs for individuals, families, and employers across the state. Now that Gov. Henry McMaster (R-S.C.) has signed H. 4216, the historic tax reform bill putting the state on the path to a 1.99% flat income tax in five years, Palmetto State lawmakers are looking to pass the Regulatory Freedom Act, legislation making South Carolina the fourteenth state with a statutory safeguard subjecting regulations whose cost exceeds a certain threshold ($1,000,000 annually in the case of South Carolina’s RFA) to receive an up or down vote from the legislature.
Unfortunately, as reported here late last week, the South Carolina Senate Judiciary Subcommittee stripped two key provisions last week. The subcommittee advanced the bill to the full Senate Judiciary Committee, but not before removing the provision requiring costly regulations to receive legislative approval, as well as the automatic sunset provision. Americans for Tax Reform is urging Senate Judiciary Committee members to restores these provisions before advancing the bill to the full Senate floor.
Enactment of the Regulatory Freedom Act on the heals of landmark income tax relief would make the 2026 legislative session in South Carolina a historic one. Though that’s not to say that there aren’t some cost-raising bills still pending. Take H. 3876, legislation that would inhibit the property rights of South Carolinians. The bill would do so by making it illegal for South Carolinians who utilize the services of a property manager to list their property on home-sharing platforms like AirBnb and VRBO.
As ATR recently noted in a letter to Senate Finance Committee members, enactment of H. 3876 “would impose new administrative costs on property managers, and the South Carolinians who utilize their services, by forcing them to set up their own tax collection and remittance systems,” adding that “the likely result is depressed tax collections.”
The Senate Finance Committee is expected to take up H. 3876 next week. The aforementioned letter that ATR sent to members of that committee reads as follows:
