Editor’s note: If you’d like an email notice whenever we publish Ross Ramsey’s column, click here. When lawmakers write a tax bill, money isn’t all they’re thinking about. Sometimes, it’s not even on the list of things under discussion — like in Tuesday’s hearing on vaping legislation in the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. And when they are writing tax bills to raise money, they’re making social policy — even when the social effects of a tax aren’t under discussion. That might be the case when the same committee takes up legislation — as soon as Wednesday morning — to raise sales taxes by a penny and use the resulting $5 billion (or more) in revenue to pay for property tax cuts. The vaping bills were about taxation — thus, their assignment to a tax committee — but government fundraising wasn’t the object. Instead, committee members wanted to know whether vaping products should be taxed based on nicotine content — a way to charge more for more potent drugs and also a way to put more powerful products out of reach for some buyers, such as children. The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one. A proposed constitutional amendment… Read full this story
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