Tax breaks restrict budget solutions
A retired chemical plant employee in Baton Rouge has come up with a solution for state legislators trying to deal with a $1 billion budget shortfall next July. The deficit is coming because that much in temporary taxes or tax break suspensions will expire July 1, 2018.
Patrick Duggan has suggestions lawmakers don’t like. He said an emergency session should be called to eliminate all existing tax exemptions and tax credits and eliminate the restriction on the type of legislation the Legislature may consider based on an odd or even year.
Both proposals, he said, should be in the form of constitutional amendments, which require voter approval.
“Why such a radical proposal?” Duggan said in his letter to The Advocate. “To clean out all of the loopholes in the tax code that our legislators (for whatever reason) refuse to address.”
Duggan said lawmakers could reinstitute those credits and exemptions “necessary for their political survival.”
“No new taxes, and everybody shares the pain,” he said.
The Advocate reminded its readers recently that the federal government provides most of the money to fund Louisiana’s $29.5 billion budget. State taxpayers only contribute $9.6 billion and legislators can only appropriate $3.6 billion of that because of legal dedications.
The newspaper talked with Steven Procopio, policy director for the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, about the state’s money problems. It said Procopio knows that state budget drafters allocate dollars to programs with legal protections and then split what little is left between higher education and health care, which are unprotected areas of the budget.
Only one budget solution appears to have some solid support among legislators, and it isn’t popular with taxpayers. That would involve extending the additional one percent state sales tax enacted last year that gave Louisiana the highest state and local sales tax in the country
State Rep. Franklin Foil, R-Baton Rouge and vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, told the newspaper new revenue will be needed and raising it will be difficult. Still, both he and Procopio said they believe a solution, as usual, will be worked out at the last minute.
We believe Duggan’s suggestions should be seriously considered as a major part of the solution.