taxes

In the Finance committee Thursday Senators questioned the way the House filled the hole it dug in the proposed budget for next year. The House took out one-time money, from selling state property, court settlements, and dedicated funds, and put in a tax amnesty program.

The Legislative Fiscal Office usually considers tax amnesty revenues to be one-time money too.

A bill to shorten the time frame from three years to 18 months for owners of adjudicated properties to pay unpaid taxes has advanced in the house.

In a 13-minute speech kicking off the 2013 legislative session, Gov. Bobby Jindal said he still wants the legislature to get rid of the income tax in Louisiana, but he let go of his plan for doing so with a big sales tax hike, an increased tobacco tax and the removal of some tax breaks. Listen to the speech in its entirety.

The lawmaker sponsoring Governor Bobby Jindal’s tax reform package is saying the administration has learned from his mistakes last session. 

Remember in high school when math teachers wouldn’t give full credit for answers that weren’t supported with all the work that showed how a student arrived to that answer?

On Friday, a group of 250 clergymen and women challenged the work behind the math used by the Jindal administration to calculate the tax burden on individuals under the governor’s new tax swap plan.

The governor wants to eliminate the personal income tax, the corporate income tax and the corporate franchise tax. He’d replace that lost revenue by raising the sales tax to 5.88 percent, applying the sales tax to more services and tinkering with a few other taxes and exemptions. Jindal says the plan will not amount to a tax hike for citizens or a loss in revenue for the state, but that it will be revenue neutral.

Gov. Bobby Jindal went before the legislature Thursday to unveil his tax proposal. He wants to eliminate the income tax and says the state can make up the gap with a higher and more expansive sales tax.

The proposal would make Louisiana the state with the highest sales tax in the nation. Combined with local sales taxes, Louisianians would pay an average of 10.75 percent in sales tax. And the state would start taxing things that haven’t been taxed before – like landscaping, haircuts, and cable and Internet services.