BATON ROUGE — NFIB, the state’s leading small business advocacy organization, is urging lawmakers to pass House Bill 57, a proposed state constitutional amendment that would save small businesses money by simplifying sales tax collection in Louisiana.
“Right now, we have a patchwork quilt of tax-collection agencies that creates confusion and drives up the cost of doing business in Louisiana,” NFIB State Director Dawn Starns said. Louisiana has 63 parishes with local sales tax collectors for over 100 different taxing jurisdictions and is only one of two states without centralized collection for state and local sales tax, she said. If the legislature approves the constitutional amendment, it would go before voters in the October general election.
“This amendment wouldn’t hurt cities and parishes at all,” Starns said. “It wouldn’t take money out of city and parish budgets, decrease the size of local government, or take away local officials’ power to audit sales tax collections.
“What it would do is move Louisiana into the 21st century by streamlining sales tax collection through a single agency, and that, in turn, would free up resources our members could use to grow their businesses and create jobs.”
