Alaska House passes fisheries tax credit expansion unanimously

The Alaska House of Representatives voted 40-0 Sunday to extend and expand a tax credit program for seafood processors, passing Senate Bill 130 without amendments during what supporters described as historically poor market conditions for Alaska's fishing industry.

The bill extends the Fisheries Product Development Tax Credit from its current 2027 expiration date to 2037 and expands it to cover all species of fish and shellfish, not just the five species currently eligible. The credit allows processors to deduct up to 50 percent of equipment costs from their fishery business tax liability. As of 2020, the program had generated $114 million in new revenue to the general fund due to increases in fisheries product value, according to testimony on the House floor.

The credit program began in 2003 as the Salmon Product Development Tax Credit. Herring was added in 2014 when the Alaska House passed House Bill 204, which also allowed broader use of the credit for canned seafood products and extended the program through 2020. The program was expanded again in 2022 to include pollock, sablefish, and Pacific cod. Senate Bill 130 removes species restrictions entirely and adds icing technologies to the list of qualified equipment. The bill also requires faster determinations of credit eligibility from the Department of Revenue. A companion measure, House Bill 129, was introduced in 2025 by the House Fisheries Committee as an alternate vehicle for similar changes.

Representative Louise Stutes, who presented the bill on the House floor, said the legislation came from recommendations of the Joint Seafood Task Force evaluating Alaska's seafood industry. The bill was sponsored by the Senate Rules Committee by request of the task force. Senator Gary Stevens, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, told the House Finance Committee in April that SB 130 is probably the key bill to come out of that task force because it really does add new and innovative ways to process seafood, to get the last squeak out of it, to make sure that we are getting the most money we can out of the product we are producing.

During a time of historically poor market conditions and low value for Alaska's seafood, Senate Bill 130 will support our ailing processing industry and incentivize processors to get more out of each fish, which in turn provides a better bottom line for our Alaska fishermen, Stutes said in her floor presentation.

Representative Sarah Vance said in floor debate that the bill addresses challenges facing all species simultaneously for the first time. She noted that farmed fish and aquaculture recently outpaced wild stocks for the first time, calling it the canary in the coal mine about our Alaskan fisheries.

Vance said the credit helps small fishermen who have become direct marketers invest in new technology such as ice slurry systems modeled after those used in Iceland. The systems keep fish at low temperatures immediately after harvest, preserving quality and allowing fishermen to sell at higher profit margins.