Mississippi Veteran Hiring Tax Credit, Repealed in 2018

This entry records an absence, because the state is still advertising the benefit. Miss. Code Ann. Section 27-7-22.38 gave an income tax credit to a taxpayer who hired an honorably discharged veteran who had served on active duty on or after September 11, 2001 and had been unemployed for six consecutive months immediately before the hire. The credit was the lesser of ten percent of annual wages or $2,000 per person per year, for five years, with a six-month employment requirement, an average of thirty hours a week, one claim per person hired, and a one million dollar aggregate cap. It was repealed effective January 1, 2018. A taxpayer already eligible before that date remained eligible notwithstanding the repeal and could carry the credit forward, but no hire made after January 1, 2018 creates a new credit. Mississippi Veterans Affairs still prints it. The agency's state benefits guidebook carries a section headed "Credit for Taxpayers That Employ Certain Veterans." A Mississippi employer reading the official state guidebook today will go looking for a credit that has not existed for eight years, and a veteran may be told in an interview that the employer expects one. What is actually available to a Mississippi employer hiring a veteran is federal, not state: the federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit has veteran target groups, including an unemployed veteran group and a higher credit for a veteran with a service-connected disability. That is claimed through the Mississippi Department of Employment Security's certification process and then on the federal return. Mississippi's Pledge to Hire a Hero program provides recruitment, screening, and referral, and its materials point employers to work opportunity tax credits and on-the-job training, at (888) 844-3577. For a veteran negotiating an offer, the useful correction is simply that there is no Mississippi state credit to point to. Point to the federal one.