The T Word: Sin taxes a likely piece of Legislature’s budget fix

We’ve written before about the appeal of sin taxes as a means of raising revenue in the face of budget deficits; even anti-tax crusaders as devout as Gov. Tim Pawlenty have gone to that well.

The emerging consensus among DFL legislators is that it’s time to do it again. Cigarettes are, as ever, a likely target, but a growing number of Democrats are also attracted to the revenue potential of additional alcohol taxes–and that seems to go for conservative and liberal members alike.

Still, fresh sin taxes will probably constitute a small part of the new revenue that DFLers are aiming for (which amount to a total of $2 billion in the Senate and $1.5 billion in the House). The best guess of sources close to the respective tax committees is that sin tax changes will at most amount to $100-$200 million in new revenue during the ‘10-’11 biennium.