What passed during the 2026 legislative session, what didn’t and what it means for your business

By Doug Loon
President and CEO
Minnesota Chamber of Commerce

Since we last visited, the 2026 legislative session officially adjourned Sunday at midnight, and that wraps up a session where the Minnesota Chamber achieved a number of important priorities for the business community and for our members. One of the biggest outcomes this session was a more balanced approach to policymaking and an increased recognition that Minnesota must improve its economic competitiveness to achieve stronger growth for our state.

So let me give you a rundown of a few issues. We have talked about some of these on the podcast, but here is the list of items where we were able to block harmful proposals as well as make some progress.

The Chamber successfully helped stop proposals that included a new fifth tier income tax, digital advertising taxes, a social media excise tax, a CEO pay ratio tax and expansion of the sales tax to professional services. A whole range of new taxes were proposed this year, and due to the hard work of the Chamber and other organizations, we were able to block these this year.

Beyond that, lawmakers actually made some important progress on federal tax conformity, something we have also talked about on the podcast. That includes Section 179 expensing, bonus depreciation and research and experimentation expensing for Pass Through Entities, but it left out C corporations, so we are going to have to revisit that issue next year.

The Legislature also revived and extended the Pass Through Entity tax for two years, providing important federal tax relief for Minnesota businesses. This provision does not cost taxpayers in Minnesota any money, but they only did it for two years, meaning we are going to have to revisit that issue as well in 2027.

On workplace policy, the Chamber successfully fought against new mandates and broad artificial intelligence-related employment regulations that would have added more costs and complexity for employers, so another win there.

In the health care area, the Chamber successfully opposed a number of new insurance mandates that would have increased costs for businesses and employees. The Chamber also helped defeat proposals that would have banned non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) for economic development projects and broad artificial intelligence regulatory frameworks that would have disrupted routine business operations.

So clearly, we had some wins across the board and we are proud of that work, but there is still more work to be done. Some challenges still remain, including Minnesota’s high tax burden, rising costs, workforce shortages and continued pressure for additional regulations and mandates.

Also, last week we had a really important program brought to you by the Minnesota Chamber Foundation where we released a new report called Minnesota’s economic imperative: A blueprint for growth. It outlines a number of recommendations to accelerate growth and prosperity as we seek to grow our workforce and deliver better value for Minnesotans.

So, I encourage you to check out the report. This is an important contribution from the Chamber Foundation, building on reports done late last year that identified the challenges of our economy. Now we bring forward this blueprint for growth to help us focus our attention on what we can do collectively to improve the outlook for our state’s economy.

The report does call for doubling per capita GDP growth over the next decade. This is an important goal, and it will focus our attention on attracting talent, encouraging innovation and creating a stronger long term growth strategy for the state.

We are proud of this work on the report as well as our work at the Capitol this year because we have had your help and support along the way. We do it for you and we appreciate your support.

So have a great rest of your day have a great Memorial Day weekend. We look forward to catching up with you soon on the Minnesota Business Podcast.