Budget update: cig tax=50 cents

Maybe Democratic leaders got the message from the deluge of phone calls at their Capitol offices. Legislative leaders are slightly tweaking “revenue points” in the ever-redrafting budget. The $100 cut in the $300 property-tax credit on income taxes has now been pushed out to the second year of the biennium, which starts on July 1, 2016. So that is $48 million middle-class homeowners would save in the first year of the budget and cough up in the second.

Also, the cigarette tax proposal is getting increased in the second year to 25 cents, for a total of 50 cents a pack on top of the current $3.40 per-pack tax.

Two other changes would save consumers $3.9 million in the first year (by reducing the proposed sales tax on Internet services from 3 percent to 2.5 percent) and $10 million (a similar redction in the sales and use taxes on computer processing and data processing).