It has largely escaped notice... but the [Indiana] Senate budget rolled out by Senator Luke Kenley strips out the automatic tax refund (or ATR) provision that has been advocated by Governor Mitch Daniels as an important part of his legislative agenda.

Under Mitch’s ATR proposal, the state would automatically return to taxpayer dollars back to taxpayers whenever the state was running a budget surplus (and had a sufficient rainy day fund accumulated as a reserve).

Luke Kenley didn't like that idea...

Yesterday, I wrote that Senator Jim Banks had filed amendment #11 to HB 1001 reintroducing the Automatic Tax Refund (ATR) in the Senate.  But word got out that the amendment was DOA because, get this, it didn’t have the votes!  So, doing some math, if you assume that all 13 Democrats would vote against it, that means at least 12-13 Senate Republicans were willing to vote against it too.  This now means that all hope for the taxpayers is now is in Rep. Eric Turner’s House amendment.  But when you break this down, at least 1/3 of the Senate Republican caucus is willing to stiff taxpayers and the Governor.  And this after he personally asked them for help! - Nick Barbknecht

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:24:28 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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