Crist wants one sales tax exemption repealed
by Michael C. Bender | March 24th, 2009UPDATE: This blog was updated to include the correct value of the sales tax exemption.
At two different times today, Gov. Charlie Crist teased reporters about an afternoon meeting he was having with his budget director, Jerry McDaniel, in which they were going to talk about a budget cut that would not hurt education spending or health programs for the poor.
We caught up with him at the governor’s mansion before a Torah dedication tonight to ask about the meeting.
Crist said he wasn’t prepared to talk about cuts and instead mentioned looking at “the other side of the ledger,” like fees.
“There’s some exemptions that I would encourage the legislature to look at, too,” Crist said. “There’s one that relates to automobiles when you have a trade-in. For some reason, and I don’t know exactly when it happened an exemption was carved out, and in my conversations with Jerry could mean as much as a half a million billion in dollars that we could use to help education. We’re just starting to look at that and study it.”
So if Crist’s estimate is right, that brings the budget deficit down to $2,999,500,000 $2,500,000,000.
(For some background on sales tax exemptions, click here.)
Tags: Charlie Crist, sales tax, state budget
Where's the money? Use The Post's interactive database of who wants and who's getting federal dollars.
Use these interactive graphics to find and contact Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast legislators.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:15 am
[...] — gatorblue The Governor is getting rather brave these days. He’s actually endorsed the repeal of one sales tax exemption. “There’s some exemptions that I would encourage the legislature to look at, too,” Crist said. [...]