Have you had your annual battle with the tangle of Christmas lights yet? For the past five months, the state’s Sales Tax Streamlining and Modernization Commission has been trying to unsnarl Louisiana’s complex sales tax structure.
On Tuesday, Arthur Rosen, representing the Institute for Professionals in Taxation, told the Commission that uniformity is the goal. “I believe the business community - and I’m not speaking for the whole business community - always welcomes uniformity and conformity,” he said.
In a system that lacks consistency, even buying a candy bar can be confusing. “If you buy them on the cookies shelf in a grocery store," says Rosen, "they’re not taxable. If you get them off a candy shelf in the same store, they’re taxable. And somehow, the cashier is supposed to know where you picked that up.”
How much sales tax you pay also depends on where you buy it, as sales tax rates change from city to city and parish to parish.
Commission member Dannie Garrett also pointed to the role tax exemptions play, saying "one of the things we have done in Louisiana over the last twenty years or so is we have created a number of state-only exemptions and exclusions, which has created less uniformity of our base."
In addition to untangling the variety of tax rates, there’s also a political component at play. Commission Chair, Representative Julie Stokes says the type of collection system we have in Louisiana "is a very diffused system, under which all the parishes basically have their own collector. I think there are only three states like us where collection efforts are scattered throughout the state. It’s very ingrained in our culture.”
Especially since in Louisiana, Sheriffs are responsible for collecting local taxes.
The Commission hopes to be able to connect the strands by the time the new administration takes office in January.