So what's the latest with the LA Special Session?

Widespread frickery

The .5% sales tax increase bill was voted down last night. They will likely vote on the .4% sales tax increase today. It will probably be voted down, too.

The Supreme Court decision on internet sales threw everything into chaos in the morning when the author of one of the three tax bills withdrew his bill citing the decision. By night time they brought up a bill that retained .4 cents it was amended to .5 cents and then received 60 out of 105 votes, but it needed 70.

No one is sure what the next step is. They are scheduled to come back in at 9:30, but probably will take longer than that as they come up with a game plan.

I spoke to a legislative fiscal analyst this morning, and they have no idea how to write the fiscal notes now. Their whole model is blown up with the SC ruling.

Good.

The impact on me will be 0 because I always reported my use tax. The problem is the amount of online purchases that would be subject to sales tax is unknown because the vast majority of people do not report their untaxed online purchases.

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Honestly they ought to ignore it for right now. I am not sure we will see any additional revenue out of this as our system is too screwed up to capitalize on this opportunity.

Maybe it can be leveraged to help fix our broken sales tax system. But I don't think that will happen with JBE at the helm. He is too beholden to local tax collectors...like his brother.

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I think most would like to, but some powerful legislators are trying to sell it like a silver bullet.

Now the Senate thinks they can suspend the rate dropping from 5% to 4%

LINK

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Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego, and the body's tax committee chairman, Sen. J.P Morrell, D-New Orleans, have filed a resolution to suspend the law that would automatically drop the state's sales tax rate from 5 percent to 4 percent after June 30 for a year. It will be discussed in the Senate tax committee Friday.

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I don't possibly see how this can be legal.

But then again, I didn't think the retroactive restrictions on solar panels, or film credits, was legal. I didn't see how the ACA "tax" was legal. So what do I know.

Where can you find the information on what all is protected in the budget? Maybe the news should investigate the pet projects and wasteful spending to get it into the light to force a change.

Define “protected in the budget”.

Technically everything not in health care or education is protected.


The interesting stuff is likely the sales tax exemptions for “other”, which is a black hole.

Revenue got called before the legislature to explain what exemptions were covered in there and how much was exempted for each in a calendar year and they couldn’t do it the way the form was designed.