New Tax Measures, and Some Still Pending

The traditional portion of the Mississippi legislative sessions has concluded, but lawmakers will soon come back for an overtime session to finish business they failed to act upon the first time.

The Commercial Dispatch has a good rundown of what tax measures will be taking effect July 1st, as well as what still needs to be worked on.

Among the new laws are a sales-tax holiday and a broadened sales-tax exemption on home-medical supplies for Medicaid and Medicare recipients. Another law makes sure people pay sales taxes on downloaded music and video bought through the Internet.

Another tax bill that cleared the legislature was an income-tax credit for furniture makers. However, Haley Barbour vetoed the bill after remaining fairly silent on the bill as it was pending.

And here is more from the Commercial Dispatch on what died, and what is still pending.

Bills that died include measures to expand the homestead-tax exemption and cut the business-inventory tax.

Still in flux this legislative session: a cigarette tax increase, the state’s diminishing car-tax reduction fund and a hospital tax to help plug up a Medicaid budget deficit.

Descriptions of tax bills signed into law by Barbour are below the fold.

- House Bill 348 to exempt clothes and shoes from sales taxes in the last weekend of July each year. Those items valued less than $100 won’t be assessed the 7 percent sales tax.

- House Bill 193 to provide sales tax exemptions for eyeglasses and home-medical supplies that people on Medicaid and Medicare partially pay for. Under the old law, only the costs covered by the government health care programs were exempt from the sales tax. The new law broadens that to the costs charged to Medicaid-Medicare patients and their health insurers.

- House Bill 1461 to clarify the state sales tax on downloaded music and video bought on the Internet. It’s to make sure the tax charged to people who buy music and video in stores also applies to what the new law calls “electronically transferred digital products.”

- Senate Bill 2606 to cut to 1.5 percent the various sales-tax rates on the repair of tractor parts, the sale of farm implements and the sale and repair of forestry equipment. The same bill also increases the 1 percent sales tax on tractors to 1.5 percent.

- House Bill 856 to exempt from sales taxes prepaid meals sold on college campuses. It applies to students at any public or private university or college in Mississippi.