The state’s sales tax rate is 4.45-percent one of the highest in the country. During the first televised gubernatorial debate, the candidates were asked about reducing the state sales tax back to four-percent now that the state has a surplus of money. Governor John Bel Edwards says the additional .45 percent should remain for now.
“The worst thing we can do as a state is go back to a structural budget deficit that we just came out of.”
But Edwards’ Republican challengers, Ralph Abraham and Eddie Rispone, say it’s time to lower the state’s sales tax rate. Abraham says the high sales tax rate is hurting the economy…
“We have lost jobs more than any other state in the nation and it is due to taxes, taxes taxes.”
But Edwards says claims that the tax bills approved during his time as governor have hurt the economy are untrue
“To kill the economy that is an absurd statement because the economy is the biggest it has ever been in our state’s history. It is growing at the 10th fastest rate in the country right now.”
Rispone says the state has a spending problem and if Louisiana is collecting too many taxes than it needs to cut back
“Our budgets would be balanced like they are supposed to be and then we would figure out why we have the reserves inside that budget. Not come back at the end and say well we have a surplus.”
