A first look at the effects of Texas' revised business tax showed that it did not unfairly hit small businesses, as some had feared, according to a draft analysis of the tax by the Texas comptroller obtained Tuesday.

But the 2006 changes did shift, as was anticipated, a greater tax burden to the service sector, including the telecommunications and professional services industries, while reducing the taxes paid by capital-intensive industries such as agriculture and mining.

Overall, the tax burden on most industries increased, but the tax "basically treated everyone the same by size of business," said Dale Craymer, chief economist at the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a nonpartisan business group.

And the smallest businesses — those with less than $500,000 in revenue — were the only segment to see an overall decrease in taxes paid, said Craymer, who sat on the advisory committee that has been monitoring the tax.

Even so, state Sen. Kirk Watson said the anecdotal reports of hardships by individual small businesses are "far too widespread to be ignored." And he said there are still many questions about the tax that need to be addressed by the Legislature.

Enacted in 2006 as part of a school property tax swap, the revised business tax expanded the number of businesses subject to the tax. For most qualifying businesses, the tax is 1 percent of their total revenue minus one of three options: the cost of goods sold, employee compensation or 30 percent of total revenue.

The state had estimated that the new business tax would raise almost $12 billion in the 2008-09 two-year budget, more than double what the previous tax generated. Instead, it collected $4.3 billion in 2008, far less than the $5.9 billion that was expected.

Craymer said the data from the first year of collections is "blurry snapshot" of the impact of the tax. A clearer picture will not be available until the state has a few years of data.

But this information is all that the legislators will have to work from as they consider changes this session.

And Watson, D-Austin, said it is already apparent that the tax is not doing all that was promised: generating enough to cover the reduction in school property taxes.

Laura Stromberg, a spokeswoman for the Texas chapter of the National Federation of Business, said her group was still analyzing the data and could not provide substantial comment Tuesday.

Stromberg's group has been leading a coalition of trade associations pushing to reform the tax in the upcoming legislative session, which begins Jan. 13, because they say the tax unfairly affects certain segments of the business community.

The comptroller's office, which will release the final report later this week, had no comment on the draft.