This does not compute. Or does it?
Gov. Bobby Jindal, who in 2012 vetoed the renewal of a 4-cent tobacco tax, is considering getting Louisiana’s tax on cigarettes in line with the rest of the nation, according to New Orleans news station WWL.
“We’ve always said that we would be fine with it, if it was done in a revenue neutral way,” Jindal told the TV station. “We are willing to consider this and other changes as part of a larger effort to eliminate the income tax in a revenue neutral way.”
Louisiana currently charges 36 cents per pack. The national average is $1.47 per pack. Probably not coincidentally, smokers tend to cluster near the lower end of the socioeconomic demographic, making Jindal’s newfound embrace of a possible tax hike comport with his bold plan for eliminating personal and corporate income taxes and replacing the lost revenue with a 3-cent state sales tax hike, a move many argue will shift the revenue burden to middle- and low-income residents.
Read more about the cigarette tax here.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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The facts, as per the Louisiana Dept. of Revenue Report for 2011(Pg 11) read as such: total state income tax(individual and corporate) collected for year 2011 amounted to $2.585 billion dollars. Of this amount, $198 million reflects state corporate income tax(a $500 million dollar reduction since 2008) and $2.387 billion individual state income tax paid.
Total receipts for state sales taxes(4%) for 2011 amounted to $2.670 billion dollars. On a per cent collection bases this reflects an amount of $667,500,000 million dollars per cent of state sales tax accessed.
When one divides the total amount of income tax paid for 2011, $2.585 billion dollars by the average per cent sales tax collection, $667 million per cent, the resulting increase in the state sales tax necessary to replace revenue generated the state income tax works out to a 3.88 cents increase—4 cents on the dollar increase. A 1 cent difference does not at first glance to be a critical discrepancy: however, when one realizes that a one cent difference results in a $667 million shortfall in revenue the penny becomes critical.