Gov. Jennifer Granholm has offered up a $685 million revenue package to balance the 2010 budget that includes an assortment of tax hikes that lawmakers have yet to accept or have rejected in the past.
Chief among the tax proposals is an extension of the 6 percent sales tax to sports and entertainment tickets that would generate an estimated $87 million...The tax on tickets appears on a list of suggested revenue increases and while negotiations to close a $2.8 billion budget deficit for general state services and K-12 schools are supposed to be secret, lobbyists appear to have ready access to some of the details being discussed.
A public relations effort has already been launched to kill another option floated by Granholm, raising the cigarette tax from $2 to $2.25 to generate an additional $54 million. That dovetails with a $45 million tax hike on smokeless tobacco contained in the $207 million revenue
package Granholm proposed back in February. Lawmakers have yet to act on any of them.
And all this after her own party voted against her proposal to double the state's tax on beer. Let's see... what else can we tax???