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Update: House Speaker Joe Hackney said at 4:15 p.m. that House Finance Chairmen were authorized to cut a final budget deal without coming back to the caucus.  Details, as listed below, may change but are in the ballpark. Negotiators on both sides are saying a tax deal is possible tonight. An appropriations deal could follow Weds or Thursday if the tax plan comes through.

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Question 1: So is there a deal between the House and the Senate on how to raise $990 million in new taxes over the next year?

Answer: No, but there’s movement.

Question 2: So what the heck does that mean?

Answer: The Senate has made an offer to the House that House Finance chairmen consider “serious.”

Question 3: Serious as in we’re about to be done with the budget?

Answer: That’s the $18.9 billion question.

Here’s the deal: The Senate Democrats caucuses this morning and apparently let their finance chairmen make an offer to the House that didn’t entail the full-scale rewrite of the state’s tax code that Sens. Hoyle and Clodfelter had been talking about.

House Democrat Finance Chairmen met with Speaker Hackney this afternoon. On his way out of that meeting, Hackney said, “It’s closer than it ever has been.”

As Hackney described it, there was a tentative deal on the table that took parts of the House and Senate positions into one comprehensive offer.

“I’ve got to go sell my caucus on the Senate things,” he said.

That sales job began during a House Democratic Caucus meeting between 2 p.m. and 3p.m. this afternoon. When that meeting broke up, there were a lot of grim faces but Rep. Paul Luebke, the senior House Finance Chair, was upbeat.

He described the Senate offer as the “third way” that he has been looking toward.

As Luebke described it, the Senate offer was something that could be tweaked and messaged into a final deal.

The Senate and House finance negotiators are due to meet again this afternoon. And the House is due to caucus again this afternoon.

Although there isn’t a final detail, here’s what the Senate offer entailed:

• A 2 percent surcharge on income taxes. So a person (business or individual) paying $1,000 in taxes would pay $1,020 next year. (Sen. Clark Jenkins, a finance chair, says this surcharge will be on all income levles. Sen. David Hoyle, also a finance chair, said the surcharge will apply to only those making more than $100,000. Clearly, both things can't be true.) Update: Negotiators on the House side said the Senate offer was for a surcharge on all levels of income.
• A 3/4 cent increase in the sales tax. State sales taxes would be 7.5 cents in most places.
• $100 million in new sin taxes, including a 15-cent per pack increase in tobacco taxes.
• The House and Senate are agreed to continue the “click through” tax provision in the House proposal that has hacked off Amazon and other online retailers.
• Other than the click-through tax, there are no new taxes in the Senate offer, so no gross receipts tax on entertainment.

According to all involved, the details may change, but both sides say a final deal is within sight.

Update: Also in talks: raising the sales tax on the retail sale of electricity to the prevailing sales tax rate. That is not a done deal but a point that is being discussed. Currently, sales tax on electricity is at 3 percent.