A trade association will soon adorn gas pumps across Indiana with ads opposing a Republican plan to use higher fuel taxes to pay for infrastructure repairs.
Raising the cigarette tax by $1 per pack would help pay for Medicaid spending and tobacco-cessation programs—and would help patch the $300 million annual hole in the budget created by the House’s road-funding plan.
Tax increases should be transparent. The proposed cigarette tax hike is not. While we laud the Legislature’s goals, we urge lawmakers to separate these issues and ensure Hoosiers understand just what they’re paying for and how.
The panel has sent a bill to the Indiana Senate a bill to drastically overhaul the vaping industry law that granted a monopoly to one company and sparked an FBI probe last summer.
House Ways and Means Chairman Tim Brown called the $31.4 billion budget an “honest appraisal of the money we have and the spending priorities we have going forward.”
The bill pares controversial regulations put in place during the previous two sessions of the Indiana General Assembly, which many believe went too far.
Not only is a cigarette-tax hike an unreliable revenue stream, but it also would disproportionately harm low-income Hoosiers and small-business owners living near the state’s border.
The foundation is becoming specific with what it wants to accomplish and is shifting more toward funding research that advocates for systemic change, instead of traditional grant-making.
Indiana is consistently ranked near the bottom of the 50 states for health, a statistic made worse because too many Hoosiers smoke. The Institute of Medicine says the most reliable method to reduce tobacco use is to increase the price of tobacco products, thus encouraging cessation and reducing the number of kids who start smoking. […]
As currently written, the bill by Sen. Randy Head of Logansport effectively guts the troubled 2016 law, which created a monopoly and sparked an FBI investigation.
Nearly 10,000 tanning salons closed in the U.S. since Obamacare went into effect, representing about 55 percent of all salons operating at the time. The law imposed a 10 percent tax on tanning as a way to help fund provisions of the law.
