State leaders want to tax what you buy, not what you earn
The second meeting of a joint legislative committee looking to reform Mississippi tax laws was strikingly similar to the first one a month ago: It consisted mainly of a long presentation from the conservative Tax Foundation.
And the state’s Republican legislative leaders appear to have plotted the general course for tax reform even before the committee got rolling: shifting the state’s tax burden even more from corporate and individual income to “user-based” taxes such as sales taxes. It remains unclear whether that would include increasing tax revenue overall for road work, education or other needs for which numerous groups are lobbying.
“Nicole … can you get us some models (of tax reform) together that we can look at?” House Speaker Philip Gunn asked the Tax Foundation’s Nicole Kaeding, after lawmakers on the committee gave her a round of applause following her nearly two-hour presentation, as they did in September.
Kaeding has twice told the special tax reform committee that her D.C.-based think tank believes corporate taxes are most stifling to growth, while taxing consumption provides incentives to save, with property taxes being least harmful to growth.
Read more: http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2016/10/03/tax-committee-meeting/91461942/