Sen. Caryn Tyson, front, R-Parker, defends a bill that restores a tax break for small businesses while Sen. Barbara Bollier, R-Mission Hills, argues for sending it back to committee.

Topeka ? The Kansas Senate advanced a bill Wednesday that restores a tax break for small businesses, despite concerns that the state may need that money to address a Kansas Supreme Court mandate to increase funding for public schools.

The tax break allows individual tax filers who run their own businesses to deduct the costs they incur when placing certain tangible property and computer software into service.

It was repealed as part of the 2012 tax overhaul that eliminated all taxes on income derived from those people’s business operations. But when lawmakers reversed that tax policy last year, they neglected to restore that deduction.

The bill would restore the exemption, retroactive to 2017. And even though the amount of money is relatively small — $21 million in the upcoming fiscal year, and about $10 million each year after that, according to Department of Revenue estimates — a number of senators argued that the Senate should put off any kind of tax debate until lawmakers resolve the issue of school finance.

“I am concerned that we are going to be removing money from our budget today, from our revenues, that we might need, either for schools or, for example, something like Medicaid expansion,” Sen. Barbara Bollier, R-Mission Hills, said of the bill.

Bollier noted that Republican Majority Leader Jim Denning, of Overland Park, has said he will not even entertain a discussion about Medicaid expansion until lawmakers pass a long-term fix for school finance and the Kansas Supreme Court approves it.

Although Bollier said she supports the bill, she made a motion to send it back to the Senate tax committee. She said once lawmakers figure out how much revenue will be needed to address school finance, the bill could come back out as part of a comprehensive revenue plan.

But Sen. Caryn Tyson, R-Parker, who chairs the tax committee, argued that business owners need to know what the tax law is going to be so they can make long-term capital investment decisions.

“Our businesses make decisions based on tax code,” she said. “Whether we want to face that fact or not, they do make decisions based on tax code.”

Tyson said other kinds of corporations and businesses that weren’t part of the sweeping 2012 exemption still get to take the expense deduction. But it’s currently not available to so-called “pass-through” entities like sole proprietorships, partnerships and limited liability companies, where the income of the business is the personal income of the owner.

Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, the ranking minority member on the tax committee, said he was the one who made the motion to advance the bill to the full Senate. But he said he was surprised it was put on the debate calendar so soon, since tax bills are exempt from Thursday’s “turnaround” deadline for most bills to pass out of their chambers of origin.

Senate Vice President Jeff Longbine, R-Emporia, noted that he supported last year’s bill reversing course on the 2012 tax cuts, and he introduced the motion in the Senate to override then-Gov. Sam Brownback’s veto of that bill. But he also said he thought it was important to restore the expense deduction as soon as possible.

Longbine also said the $10 million annual cost of the deduction was minuscule compared to the $1.2 billion that last year’s tax increase is expected to generate over two years.

Bollier’s motion to send the bill back to committee failed on an unrecorded voice vote. A final vote Thursday to approve the bill would send it to the House for consideration.