In a new and extensive sit-down interview with Economist magazine, Gov. Bobby Jindal touches on everything from school choice and the recovery of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina to how he thinks the United States ought to stand up to Russia, address radical Islam and fix its broken immigration system. And Jindal tells the magazine he would like to see Louisiana repeal its individual income and corporate taxes.
The governor made repealing the income tax and replacing the lost revenue with a higher, broader sales tax, higher cigarette taxes and a decrease in tax exemptions a top priority during the 2013 legislative session. Lawmakers, under pressure from the business community and others, ultimately rejected the idea after months of debate, and Jindal has not since brought the issue back up.
The magazine asks Jindal in its interview whether repealing the income and corporate taxes and replacing them with other taxes is politically possible.
“It is. I still think it’d be a good idea, to get rid of the income tax. I think it’d be good for growth,” Jindal says. “We looked at the tax code as a way to help grow the private sector economy. Others in the Legislature viewed it as a way to generate more revenue for government. So many of them came to us and said, “we’d be happy to work with you to get rid of the income tax if that means more money for us to spend.” But that’s not why we’re doing this.”
Jindal goes on to say that as governor his administration has enacted the largest income tax cut in the state’s history.
“We’ve also got rid of the taxes on debt, new equipment and utilities. These were unorthodox, those last three,” he says. “Those were taxes our neighbouring states didn’t have, [and] that discouraged investment. We would literally have companies tell us that their newest equipment in Louisiana was older than their oldest equipment elsewhere because we had these taxes.”
