Legislators are still discussing the best way to cut your taxes, but the gas tax isn’t likely to be part of the package.
Senate Republicans have repeatedly said they’d rather wait till next year to cut taxes, when they’ll be able to consider those changes in the context of the full budget, and will know whether anticipated revenue gains have materialized. Appropriations Chairman Ryan Mishler (R-Bremen) says it’s likely House and Senate negotiators will find a compromise in the final week of the legislative session.
House Republicans’ original tax cut package had four pieces. Mishler says Senate Republicans are united in opposition to one of them, which would have made it easier to trigger Indiana’s automatic tax refund by calling off a planned paydown of pension debt. Mishler says different senators have different views on the best options among an income tax cut, the repeal of two utility taxes, and a change in how business equipment is taxed.
Democrats have been lukewarm about cutting taxes at all, but Anderson Senator Tim Lanane says if Republicans insist on cutting taxes, they should target the gas tax first. With gas price rising, he says that’s the most direct way to put money in people’s pockets. House and Senate Republicans both dismiss that idea. Ways and Means Chairman Tim Brown (R-Crawfordsville) says unlike Indiana’s bulging surplus, the gas tax is already spoken for, as part of Indiana’s long-range road funding plan. He says the ebb and flow of gas prices was baked into legislators’ projections when they passed that bill five years ago.
Governor Holcomb has made the change in business equipment taxes a priority from the start of the session. Last week, he embraced an income tax cut as well, expanding it from the House’s proposed seven-percent reduction to a 10-percent cut, a change House Republicans quickly endorsed.