The Senate Ways and Means Committee this hour is considering a revised tax package that drops several parts of the original Senate Democrats proposal and picks up a couple revenue-raising ideas from House Democrats.
The new package plus a cigarette tax hike would raise in the neighborhood of $880 million which is about $30 million less than the original proposal. (As I post this, the committee is considering amendments that could shrink the size of the package.)
Republicans are putting forth a number of amendments, without success, including one for an advisory vote on the tax package. I’ve been told an amendment just passed to restore the sales tax exemption for coal that the new bill proposed to repeal.
The big adds are:
– a sales tax on bottled water
– a 0.25 percent increase in the B&O tax rate on service businesses . This is intended to be a three-year surcharge.
These proposals have all been dropped and not part of the new bill
-repeal of nonresident sales tax exemption
-elimination of used car trade-in allowance
-aircraft excise tax
-eliminating 1st mortgage deduction for banks
-repeal of sales tax exemption on fertilizers
-repeal of preferential B&O rates for prescription drug resellers
-repeal of sale tax exemption for coal .
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