BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Paying a lawn service to mow your yard? Storing your boat at a marina? Contracting with someone to repair your roof? Getting cable or satellite TV piped into your house?
Those services and many others could be subject to new Louisiana sales taxes, under ideas being weighed as part of Gov. Bobby Jindal's tax code rewrite.
As he seeks to eliminate Louisiana's personal and business income taxes, Jindal wants to increase the sales tax income flowing to staff coffers, to help offset the loss of billions in revenue.
The Jindal administration is sifting through ideas to charge sales taxes on more products and services. The plans would get rid of some of the current sales tax breaks and roll in services not currently subject to state sales taxes.
The Republican governor's point man on the tax code rewrite, Tim Barfield, calls the plan "broadening the base" of sales tax collections.
The idea, Barfield said, is that the more items that can be swept in to the existing 4 percent state sales tax, the smaller an overall sales tax increase would have to be to counterbalance the nearly $3 billion loss from scrapping income taxes.
"Expanding the base is the largest potential for new revenue," said Rep. Joel Robideaux, R-Lafayette, the chairman of the House's tax-writing committee who will handle much of Jindal's tax code revamp legislation.
The governor has only unveiled the general concepts of what he'll propose in the upcoming legislative session that begins in April, but he's not released details. Spokesman Sean Lansing said Jindal hasn't decided what services he'd like to include in widening the sales tax base or what breaks he wants to eliminate.
Louisiana exempts more than 150 items from state sales tax. The biggest breaks — $1 billion in exemptions on food for home consumption, residential utilities, prescription drugs and fuel — won't be touched under the governor's tax package, Barfield said.
But the state has hundreds of millions of dollars in other, smaller tax breaks that could be proposed for elimination.
Over the years, lawmakers have exempted from state sales tax the educational materials bought for school classrooms, the Bibles and songbooks bought by churches, specialty beads sold to Mardi Gras krewes, telecommunication services, storm shutters, museum admissions, tickets to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, poultry farm equipment, bait and feed used to harvest crawfish and breastfeeding equipment.
As for sweeping in new services, some items aren't being considered. Barfield said Jindal won't propose taxing professional services, like doctors' visits or accounting work.
He said the administration has looked at Texas as a model to determine what types of products and services could be taxed, noting that the neighboring state is Louisiana's top competitor for many types of economic development projects.
"In Texas, consumers pay sales taxes on a variety of cable and satellite TV services, credit reporting services, data processing services, information services, custodial and janitorial services and even security services. For the most part, none of those things are taxed in Louisiana," said the Council for A Better Louisiana, which is tracking the governor's tax code rewrite.
Barfield said the administration is looking at the dollars that could be generated, the potential impact on the poor and the effect on businesses, trying to drum up new income without damaging an industry or harming low-income residents.
"We're playing a big balancing act," he said.
JUNE 17 If anyone ever wonders why Saints fans hate Atlanta with a capital H, here's a good indication. Radio "professionals" at an Atlanta station created an entire segment around making fun of former Saints player Steve Gleason, who is now paralyzed by ALS. Listen, nobody's ever accused DJs of being rocket scientists. But how could someone think it is amusing to pretend to ask a man with a degenerative, fatal disease if he will be alive next week? The DJs have been fired, and are now whining about how gutless their former bosses are. Wow.
JUNE 18 Here's the latest from the Advocate on the fatal hit-and-run accident allegedly involving the president of the Livingston Parish School Board. He's accused by police of hitting a 21-year-old man on a highway early Sunday and driving away. The man died at a hospital later. On Monday, police seized the president's truck and towed it away. But he's available for board meetings: apparently a $500 bond is sufficient for this type of thing over in St. Helena Parish.
JUNE 18 Former broadcast journalist Griffin Scott has posted this plea on his blog for financial assistance from his readers. Scott, who says he was fired after he wrote something fairly innocuous (for Facebook) on his wall, is suing a media giant for his job back. He's framed himself as David going after a bloated media giant, and he's probably not far off.
JUNE 18 Here's a fairly absurd column posted on DIG Magazine about the completely absurd practice of naming killer storms. Tornadoes don't have names. Blizzards don't have names. But hurricanes do, and there's a big process to bestow them, Jacques Cormery writes. He's right about the crazy assemblage of names -- this year, there's everything from Tanya to Humberto -- and his idea that we don't waste good names on killer storms is a good one.
JUNE 17 Political columnist John Maginnis has some advice for Louisiana Republicans: grow up. After the schism that occurred in this past session - fiscal hawks teaming up with Democrats to spank the Republican "majority" and hand Gov. Jindal his, er, aspirations for continued solon control -- they need to figure out how to get along with each other, Maginnis writes.
JUNE 17 Here's the Picayune's obit story for Dorothy 'Miss Dot' Domilise, the lady who made poboys at the uptown restaurant that bears her name. Miss Dot moved to New Orleans during World War II, where she met and married her husband Sam. When she passed away Friday she was 90, and had spent more than 60 of those years working at the restaurant on Annunciation Street.
JUNE 17 This editorial in the Advocate speaks in favor of the consent decrees that have federal judges overseeing police operations and the sheriff's parish prison in New Orleans. Mayor Landrieu and Sheriff Gusman can't get along, so outside forces, like the Inspector General and the judges, are needed to make sure things run right, the editorial opines.
JUNE 18 Here's a post from Manny Schewitz on Forward Progressives that is good for a chuckle. Manny had an epiphany back in November, and is sharing it with us today: he believes that Fox "News" is killing the GOP by pandering to right wing nuts. Now, don't get it twisted: Manny's not broke up about it. He says he enjoys watching the downward spiral with a shot of whiskey and "a schadenfreude chaser."
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