Rep. Bill Faison recently told his constituents in his weekly e-mail newsletter "Bill's Seat," that he and his colleagues did not raise taxes in the state budget this session.
"The budget spends more than $20.66 million without raising taxes," the Orange County Democrat wrote.
Are you sure? Dome asked him.
Faison responded by saying that the quarter-penny sales tax increase that the budget makes permanent — one that was originally part of a temporary half-cent increase first adopted in 2001 and three times extended — did not count because it is not a "new" tax, Dan Kane reports.
But what about the increase in the tobacco tax on all products save cigarettes?
This time no reply from Faison. But in his next newsletter, this is what he reported:
This Budget does not raise your income taxes. It does make a slight increase in taxes on tobacco products other than cigarettes to fund cancer research.
Faison, by the way, has railed against tobacco tax increases in the past. In 2005, he led an unsuccessful effort to cut a 25-cent increase on a pack of cigarettes out of the state budget.
Blog RSS feed
