States Look to Raise Taxes -- Not Georgia though; with tax receipts tanking, let's lower taxes. School districts & education in this State be damned.

From The Wall Street Journal:

A free fall in tax revenue is driving more state lawmakers to turn to broad-based tax increases in a bid to close widening budget gaps.

At least 10 states are considering some kind of major increase in sales or income taxes: Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. California and New York lawmakers already have agreed on multibillion-dollar tax increases that went into effect earlier this year.

Fiscal experts say more states are likely to try to raise tax revenue in coming months, especially once they tally the latest shortfalls from April 15 income-tax filings, often the biggest single source of funds for the 43 states that levy them.
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So what does Georgia do? As noted in a 4-4-09 post entitled "Unbelievable: Republicans work in tax relief for investors into a bill originally aimed at giving breaks to businesses that hire the unemployed," on the final day of the session Georgia lawmakers pass a capital gains tax cut, something I predict Gov. Perdue will not sign into law. And how bad is it? How about, real bad.

From the AJC's Gold Dome Live:

State tax collections were off $167 million in March, the fourth consecutive bad month for a government already trying to deal with the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression.

Collections were off 14.5 percent from March 2008. For the fiscal year, which ends June 30, tax collections are down $1 billion or 8 percent.

March’s decline was actually an improvement over February, when the tax take was off by about one-third.

The news comes only a few days after state lawmakers passed a budget for the upcoming fiscal year that is balanced with $1.3 billion in federal stimulus money and $1.6 billion worth of spending cuts.

The poor collections in March included a 18.8 percent drop in income tax collections and a 5.9 percent decline in the sales tax take. Income and sales tax collections make up the largest share of the state’s income.

Collections have been off every month since November.