On Monday 11 January 2010, Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson proposed, during his State of the State address,  a statewide, three year, one percent general sales tax increase, and a tax increase of 55 cents per pack on cigarettes, to aid the state  in these hard times.   Last year, state spending was reduced by $1 billion, which caused layoffs at schools, waiting lists for social services programs, delayed road projects, and increased university tuition.  The proposed tax increases are expected to raise approximately $380 million, of which, some of the money would go to schools, universities, and prisons.  While neither party is excited about this proposal, no other proposals have been made to help stop the increasing state deficit.

On 29 December 2009, Indiana State Senator Mike Delph filed Senate Bill 174 to decrease the Indiana state sales tax rate from 7% to 6%. If the General Assembly fails to pass a Senate Joint Resolution 1, which would permanently cap the state property tax rates.  Senator Delph states that lawmakers promised taxpayers that the sales tax increase was passed to provide relief to property tax income; however, since there is no property tax rate cap, and rates have increased, this promise has been broken.  If the Resolution, capping property tax rates, is not agreed upon by the 116th General Assembly before 3 November 2010, the sales tax decrease will be effective 1 January 2011.

As of 1 January 2010, Indiana law requires the Department of Revenue to list all retail merchants, on the internet, whose Registered Retail Merchant Certificates have expired due to nonpayment of delinquent sales taxes.  At the beginning of the year, the Indiana Department of Revenue made public a list of 27,000 retail merchants with delinquent sales tax.  According to Stephanie McFarland, with the DOR, delinquent amounts for the companies range from hundreds of dollars to millions of dollars, but the list does not state the amounts owed for each company.   The DOR sends agents to retrieve the delinquent amounts, but the agents come back empty-handed.  Once a business has paid their sales tax, they will be removed from the list, and subsequently the website.

Florida Governor and lawmakers are pushing for a back-to-school sales tax holiday in 2010. Each year, Florida legislature votes on whether to offer a sales tax holiday and in 2009, both the back-to-school and hurricane preparedness holidays failed to pass.

The Governor of Maine is proposing two more amnesty programs after the successful conclusion of a recent program.  Some are concerned about supporting another program just weeks after the other one ended, which waived about 90% of fees and penalties and brought in almost twice as much as expected.

The California Legislature’s Assembly Public Safety Committee has approved a bill (AB 390) which would legalize marijuana for people over 21 years of age and impose a $50 per ounce sales tax to fund government regulation of marijuana sales. This is one of a variety of expansions of sales tax being considered by the legislature in order to increase tax revenue.

http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/acsframeset2text.htm

A potential decrease of the states’ sales and use tax rate is being considered by Michigan’s legislature, expanding sales and use tax, outlined in House Bills 5527, 5528, and 5529, to most services in Michigan.  This would exclude business to business services.

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2009-2010/billintroduced/House/pdf/2009-HIB-5527.pdf

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2009-2010/billintroduced/House/pdf/2009-HIB-5528.pdf

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2009-2010/billintroduced/House/pdf/2009-HIB-5529.pdf

The California State Board of Equalization (SBE) and Employment Development Department (EDD) announced a plan to give emergency tax relief to businesses and citizens in Humboldt County due to the December 2009 earthquake.  The SBE will permit a one month extension to file sales and use taxes without any additional fees. More details can be found at http://www.boe.ca.gov/news/2010/4-10-Y.pdf