Legislative leaders say they are putting together a tax reform plan that will be debated during the regular session that begins April 12th. Senate President Page Cortez says because of the complexity of the current tax structure, they want to bring stability, simplicity, and predictability to the state’s tax code.
“It’s going to be one of the first initiatives we discuss when we convene on April 12th, we look forward to the debate, and hopefully we will be successful.”
Cortez says the highest priority is to create a centralized state and local sales tax collection. He says Louisiana is one of three states not to have one, which makes it more difficult on businesses when it comes to paying taxes.
“We feel like in order for businesses to want to come here they don’t want to have to send their sales tax to, in some cases, up to 20 or 30 entities to pay their sales tax.”
Cortez says phasing out the property tax businesses pay on inventory and reducing and simplifying the corporate franchise tax are other proposals that will be debated.
He says Senate and House leaders are also looking at eliminating the ability for taxpayers to deduct federal income taxes they pay on their state returns, which could lead to an overall lower income tax rate.
“What we want to do is lower those tax rates and the only way you can lower them is to get a constitutional amendment to remove that deduction, then we wouldn’t be picking winners and losers, we would reduce everybody’s tax rates.”
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