Sen. Dan Clodfelter, a Charlotte Democrat and key budget negotiator, said the budget is late because the House hasn't bought into a Senate plan to reform the state's tax code.
Earlier Monday House Speaker Joe Hackney said he believed late July was too late to start an ambitious reform movement. Clodfelter said the delay is because the House hasn't gotten on board.
"We've been waiting for the House folks to pick up the challenge with us," Clodfelter said Monday night. "If it's late, it's because we were waiting on them."
Clodfelter has been a vocal advocate of the plan to lower the overall sales tax rate while taxing a host of new services and items such as car repairs or movie tickets. Even while lowering the sales tax rate for everyone, the new services could raise up to $1 billion in new taxes, he said.
Clodfelter is running a Senate finance committee meeting Tuesday in which he said he would demonstrate why the reform is needed. The Senate's budget proposal, which cleared the chamber April 9, was balanced in part on the revenue raised by a reform plan.
There is no bill yet outlining a tax reform plan. Clodfelter said one woud be coming.
He said the state cannot rush a badly conceived solution through to balance the state budget. The latest proposal, which was scuttled late last week, included some bad ideas, he said.
"We've got to get this right," Clodfelter said. "A one-cent sales tax increase is not a good thing."
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Re: Senator says tax reform needs hearing
"He said the state cannot rush a badly conceived solution through..." Why not? The House did it with annexation "reform". It would be atypical if the Democrats leading this state government DIDN"T push something ill conceived through (i.e. ethics reform, lottery/education funding, mental health, state employee health plan, probation oversight, highway trust fund...)