The Daily Advertiser: Lawmakers ponder tax reform
media mentionMar. 19, 2013 1:07 AM
Written by Bill Decker
If Gov. Bobby Jindal’s tax reform plan hurts working people, state Rep. Joel Robideaux doesn’t see how.
“I have yet to find a situation where a working individual in a working family will pay more taxes under this scenario,” Robideaux said Monday, speaking at the first meeting of the new Acadiana Press Club at South Louisiana Community College.
Jindal’s tax reform proposal would eliminate state personal and corporate income taxes and replace the revenue with higher sales taxes.
Robideaux chairs the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee. He said the administration must sell the reform, especially to the people on either side at the speakers table: state Reps. Vincent Pierre of Lafayette and Terry Landry of New Iberia, both Democrats.
“If I can’t persuade them this proposal won’t punish the poor and elderly,” Robideaux said, “then it won’t pass.”
Landry and Pierre both said they’re worried the tax burden will shift toward low-income people.
“That’s unfortunate,” Pierre said.
Landry, joking with Robideaux, said, “I trust the messenger. I just don’t trust the message.”
That message came out last week in a Jindal administration analysis of the reform plan’s impact. Despite a hike in state sales from 4 percent to 5.88 percent to make up for the lost income tax revenue, individual taxpayers in every income group, including those making $20,000 a year, will pay less, the analysis says.
The Louisiana Budget Project released a statement Monday saying the governor relies on an American Legislative Exchange Council report. The report says 62 percent of the nation’s new jobs in the last decade have been created in states with no income tax.
But nearly three-quarters of those jobs were created in Texas, said Jan Moller of the Budget Project.
“The report “» fails to mention that Texas’ performance is mostly due to factors unrelated to taxes, like its abundance of natural resources and geographic location along the trade-rich Mexican border.”
A group of 250 clergymen delivered a letter Monday to Jindal, saying the tax reform plan is unfair to the poor.
The Jindal administration proposed the tax reform as a revenue-neutral measure — it neither increases nor reduces the state’s income. During Monday’s question period, former Gov. Kathleen Blanco asked if that’s the smart move.
“It would be so much better to use the energy to go in and try amend the existing system and make it make more sense “»,” Blanco said. “It would be a healthier discussion if you all were looking at ways to generate a few dollars here and there.”
Also Monday, state Sen. Fred Mills, R-Parks, spoke about uncertainties in the health care system. Mills talked about the new public-private partnerships that will run the LSU Health Services Division’s charity hospitals, including University Medical Center in Lafayette.
“If that funding mechanism blows up “» we’ve not heard Plan B,” Mills said.
State Rep. Simone Champagne, R-Jeanerette, said she and fellow budget hawks are working on a package of bills to reform Louisiana’s budget system. Among the possible remedies: a re-examination of funding dedications that have forced reductions to fall on only a few departments, including higher education and health care.