news-record.com

Hackney on budget and Amazon (audio)

House Speaker Joe Hackney spoke with reporters after the House session on Monday night. He talked about the budget negotiations between the House and Senate, which are mainly stuck on the issue of taxes.

(Click here to listen to some of that give and take.)

Background here and here.

Hackney was asked about the Senate’s plan that would do some major rewriting of the tax code, lowering the income and sales tax rates but taxing more things. The idea would be to get more revenue but be able to say you cut taxes.

The House has resisted that approach, in part because they’re skeptical of going that quickly on tax reforms.

“We think changes of that magnitude are better rolled out over time after more study of members of the House and Senate and over perhaps a period of years,”

Later, staffers expounded on what other House members have said: the Senate plan would raise the tax on electricity and start taxing Social Security income. House members don’t like those ideas and are wary of the details they haven’t seen in the Senate package.

As an aside: The House tax plan would raise sales taxes and create new upper-end income taxes. It’s a different approach and one with which the Senate disagrees.

“We’re philosophically apart,” Sen. David Hoyle told me last week.

I asked Hackney about the ongoing controversy involving Amazon.com. (Click here for background.) The company has cut off relationships with North Carolina-based affiliates over a proposal in the House tax plan. Hackney did not seem terribly torn up by the company’s move:

“Amazon has a history of acting that way. I think they did that in New York and then they backed off and reversed themselves so I’m not sure we should take that too seriously. I have my own way of dealing with it, which is I just won’t deal with Amazon.”

Accompanying Photos

File photo (Associated Press)