Senate is likely to pass bill that will mean smaller roy­alty pay­ments for peo­ple who have leased their land for oil and nat­ural gas drilling.

A tax bill intro­duced by Sen­ate Repub­li­can Pat Browne last month requires energy com­pa­nies to auto­mat­i­cally with­hold the 3.07 per­cent of roy­alty pay­ments that landown­ers would owe in state taxes.

The Cor­bett Admin­is­tra­tion came up with the pro­posal, and House and Sen­ate lead­ers are expected to pass it along­side the state bud­get, which needs to be signed into law within the next two weeks.

The withholdings are comparable to employer tax withholdings and will allow the department to more quickly and accurately collect tax due to royalty payments from non-residents—peo­ple who live out-of-state, but own Penn­syl­va­nia land where drilling is tak­ing place

This would not be a tax increase. Landown­ers are already required to pay taxes on their roy­alty pay­ments, but are required to handle their own payments.

While taxes won’t increase, the Depart­ment of Rev­enue says improved doc­u­men­ta­tion of roy­alty pay­ments would lead to a $5.3 mil­lion increase in tax col­lec­tions next year, and about $2 mil­lion more a year going forward.

Penn­syl­va­nia acquired $46 mil­lion from taxes on drilling roy­al­ties in 2010.