Revenue Bills

The Oklahoma Constitution (Article V, Section 33) sets the following conditions on revenue bills:

A. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. The Senate may propose amendments to revenue bills.
B. No revenue bill shall be passed during the five last days of the session.
C. Any revenue bill originating in the House of Representatives shall not become effective until it has been referred to the people of the state at the next general election held throughout the state and shall become effective and be in force when it has been approved by a majority of the votes cast on the measure at such election and not otherwise, except as otherwise provided in subsection D of this section.
D. Any revenue bill originating in the House of Representatives may become law without being submitted to a vote of the people of the state if such bill receives the approval of three-fourths (3/4) of the membership of the House of Representatives and three-fourths (3/4) of the membership of the Senate and is submitted to the Governor for appropriate action. Any such revenue bill shall not be subject to the emergency measure provision authorized in Section 58 of this Article and shall not become effective and be in force until ninety days after it has been approved by the Legislature, and acted on by the Governor.

Sections A and B were part of the original state constitution; Sections C and D were added by State Question 640, an initiative petition approved in March 1992.

In a pair of important 2017 decisions, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a bill to enact a smoking cessation fee was a revenue bill (Naifeh v. Oklahoma) but that a bill that eliminated a tax exemption was not a revenue bill (Oklahoma Automobile Dealers Association v. State of Oklahoma).