Live blogging update from the General Assembly!
From the Sales and Excise Tax Modernization Subcommittee, chaired by Tom Ross with committee members Benjamin Russo, Sen. Pete Brunstetter, et. al.:
After some discussion, the committee has agreed to adopt, at least for discussion purposes, that the underlying principles they will consider in looking at sales and excise taxes will be:
Broaden the base
Eliminate exemptions
Eliminate differentiated rates
In one of the coolest new tools, they will use a tax calculator. Different changes in different tax rates can be entered into a software tool that then calculates how much revenue can be expected.
Freshmen legislators were introduced to this tool last week at the Institute of Government orientation.
It appears that today’s meeting is to determine and agree to the underlying principles, review background that was presented at full committee meetings, and to make a plan to move forward.
