Comptroller Susan Combs this week estimated that the new state business tax on gross revenues would bring in $500 to $800 million less than expected. This estimate is based on voluntary submissions made by many affected businesses. However, many business, particularly those in the service industry that is heavily targeted by the tax, did not submit their projected tax burden.

For the last decade, Texas has been the national leader in making moves toward substantive, free-market reforms as means to solve problems and improve the quality of life.

 

T exas’ accomplishments have played an important role in helping other states, and even Washington, take the same direction. Today, many of these accomplishments are threatened, most notably with plans to re-regulate the electric markets. This change could have national implications, and it certainly does not bode well for anyone doing any type of business in the state.

Representative Kelly Hancock , a Tarrant County Republican, has filed House Bill 1849 that will eliminate a tax imposed by the Texas Department of Insurance to Texas life insurers that now serves no purpose.

We know now that the state’s Texas Youth Commission was obscenely managed. The Texas Lottery was a scandal ridden mess a while back. The abuses of the Children’s Health Insurance Program are a lesson in lunacy. Name a government agency, and it’s been scandal plagued, mismanaged, or worse. And those are things legislators are supposedly elected to manage!

 

So it is nothing short of stupefying to find that the Republican-controlled Legislature seems to think they can accurately manage the private business of business better than the business owners.