CABL has a long history of working in the area of fiscal policy reform. In 1985 CABL, working with LSU, initiated a major study of Louisiana’s tax structure. Its findings were published in a book entitled, Louisiana’s Fiscal Alternatives: Finding Permanent Solutions to Recurring Budget Crises. To a large degree it served as the framework for all the major tax reform efforts of the last two decades.
Most recently, CABL participated in a major effort to revisit Louisiana’s tax structure. In 2017, the legislatively created Task Force on Structural Changes in Budget and Tax Policy issued a report detailing a variety of fiscal reforms.
CABL’s work in that arena will be guided by our core principles on tax reform:
- The tax structure should be simple
- It should seek to have low rates by being broad-based
- It should be competitive with other states in our region
- It should provide stability in meeting the revenue needs of state government
- It should be fair to all groups of taxpayers