They met in side-by side rooms at the Capitol: one task force beginning its work –
“I would like to welcome you to the Restore Louisiana Task Force – our first meeting,” said Erin Monroe-Wesley.
And the other – the Tax Structure Task Force – was preparing the language for its final report.
“We recommend eliminating 50-percent of the excess itemized deduction; maintaining the childcare-based tax credit, the earned income tax credit,” Revenue Secretary Kimberly Robinson, tax task force chair, read from the list of items to be covered in their final report.
They are also advocating uniform state and local sales tax rates, collections and reporting systems, as well as changes to the individual income tax rates.
“Using a rate structure of 1.5%, 3-percent and 4.5%, and brackets of $25000, $50000 and $100,000,” Robinson said.
Considering recommendations by previous tax reform commissions, as well as bills that have been put before the legislature, none of the thus-far agreed-upon recommendations are surprising.
Next door, at the Restore Louisiana meeting, Governor John Bel Edwards was giving the new group a pep talk.
“Thousands and thousands of our fellow Louisianans have had their lives turned upside down,” he reminded. “But what we have to do as a task force is to figure out how to put people’s lives rightside-up again.”
“Your task is not an easy one,” he warned, “But that’s why you’re here.”
Meanwhile, Lake Charles mayor Randy Roach – a former member of the state House -- was warning the tax task force members that getting their recommendations approved by lawmakers would also be a tough task.
“When we make significant changes in structure – regardless of what that is – it just becomes more difficult, simply because it’s change,” Roach advised. “But when we started this whole discussion, we wanted to be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things, because we recognize that is more suited to a 21st century state, as opposed to a 20th century state.”
*apologies to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"
Copyright 2016 WRKF
