State lawmakers float raised tobacco tax, tax break review to fill budget hole

A key state lawmaker said Friday that he will continue to press his colleagues on ways to grow revenues as they consider a budget proposal that carries forward many of the cuts made when the financial outlook was bleak.

“We obviously need to look at continuing to increase the revenue,” Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, a Rome Republican who heads the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute’s annual legislative conference that was held virtually this year.

The state treasury is benefiting from a measure lawmakers passed a year ago – before the pandemic upended life in Georgia and shocked the economy – that requires third-party online vendors like Etsy.com to collect the state sales tax. That change took effect in April, just as newly homebound consumers moved much of their spending online.

The measure is now pumping as much as $700 million into the state’s coffers, Hufstetler said.

Read more: https://georgiarecorder.com/2021/01/22/state-lawmakers-float-raised-tobacco-tax-tax-break-review-to-fill-budget-hole/