Proponents of increased tobacco taxes in Louisiana, don’t despair.
There’s still a way to get this attempt at behavioral modification into law in
a way reasonably related to the activity it regulates that will bring the state
other benefits.
A part of the Gov. Bobby
Jindal tax plan to shift taxation away from income and towards other kinds
included a $1.05 per pack tax hike on cigarettes. But with his retreat from
that specific proposal, it’s now in limbo. But a disturbing development in
California can provide the vehicle to resurrect something like it.
Recently, a federal
bankruptcy court ruled that Stockton could enter into the public sector
version of that protection, where one of the major creditors of the city is the
state’s public sector pension program. This precedent exposes pension funds to
a novel kind of liability, as now the required payments from the city to the
fund previously considered absolute and sacrosanct legally may not occur in
their entirety or at all.
Like reoccurrences of venereal disease, each year for the past several
the Louisiana Legislature has had inflicted upon it versions of bills called the Equal Pay for Women Act, the agendas of which is not what its sponsors
claim and what agenda they claim addresses a nonexistent problem to the detriment
of society.
The bills, duplicating the language of previous failed efforts, would
define a prohibited employment practice for employers of four or more where pay
differs on the basis of gender, and sets up a procedure receive damages if a
violation is present. This year versions applying to the private sector are known
as HB
453 by state Rep. Barbara Norton and
SB
153 by state Sen. Edwin Murray
clones Norton’s. SB
68 by state Sen. Karen Peterson
does the same for state and local government employment. The important
operative phrase in all three is this:
No
employer may discriminate against an employee on the basis of sex by paying
wages to an employee at a rate less than that of another employee for
the same or substantially similar work on jobs in which their performance
requires equal skill, effort, education, and responsibility and which are
performed under similar working conditions including time worked in the
position. (emphases added)
With his concession/challenge yesterday abating his tax swap plan in favor of the Legislature's pursuit of something similar, Gov. Bobby Jindal gave clear advice on the direction to head to lower income tax rates if not abolish it: excise tax exemptions he said benefited "special interests." There are several cued up in the Legislature this session for abandonment, but one stands out.
While there are those that argue that Louisiana’s generous solar energy tax
credits should be mended, Jindal would seem to think it needs to be ended now along with a few
others. Of theseveral bills prefiled that address tax exceptions, around the theme of eliminating non-productive
ones, some, like state Sen. Danny
Martiny’s SB
231, stand alone in getting rid of this tax credit by 2020. Others, like
state Rep. Roy
Burrell’s HB
444, go after several of the most wasteful, and in a quicker fashion (end
of 2015 in this case) if they cannot prove they are cost-effective.
Of which the solar one most definitively is not. Over the past four
years, each year the state has lost on average more than $11 million per year,
transferring this to the pockets of a few installers. That savings to
households averages out, given statistics
on meters installed as what these systems enable owners to do is to put in
a meter that allows them to sell energy to providers at times of high
generation by solar, to $230
a year per household, but works out to a transfer of $37,825 of business per
household to installers.
Gov. Bobby
Jindal’s address to the start of the 2013 Regular Session of the Louisiana
Legislature demonstrated he knows when to fold them and still come out a likely
winner.
Quickly mentioning a few other past policy initiatives enacted
connected to economic development, Jindal spent almost all his speech
discussing the desirability of the elimination of income taxes as a means for
continued success in this area. He then declared that he was pulling
his tax swap plan, basically no income taxes in exchange for higher and
expanded state sales taxes and some exceptions elimination, in favor of
anything that would eliminate income taxes. The plan had come under fire from a
number of quarters as its complexity served more to stoke fears than support.
Several bills already introduced would work to eliminate income
taxation, although none immediately, while other look to get rid of exemptions,
and one even wishes to institute a statewide
property tax dedicated to higher education funding. Cleverly, Jindal now
has removed his chin from leading this effort and has set himself up as arbiter
with more input than anybody else in whatever product manifests. And in
accepting this task, the Legislature leaves fewer resources available to pursue
more mischievous ends according to Jindal, such as challenges
to his budgeting.
