Governor Nathan Deal signed on Thursday a headline-grabbing proposal that would slash state income taxes while deep-sixing a lucrative tax exemption for homegrown Delta Air Lines.
The governor’s signature capped a tumultuous week at the Capitol, which dove headlong into a cultural debate on the Second Amendment after Delta discontinued a special discount program for NRA members in the days that followed a Florida school shooting.
The tax cut bill, which would reduce the state’s top income tax rate to 5.75 percent in fiscal year 2018 and then to 5.5 percent the year after, initially included the fuel exemption, but Senate leadership deleted the plank in a rebuke to Delta.
Deal has signaled he will still pursue a vehicle to secure the tax break for the airline, which ranks as the state’s single largest employer with some 33,000 workers across Georgia.
Elsewhere in the capitol …
With Thursday’s Crossover Day hangover behind it, the General Assembly enters now the final quarter of its 40-day legislative season staring down the imperative to address transit reform before the clock ticks to zero at the month’s end.
Both chambers advanced similar proposals that would mark the largest expansion of public transportation in Atlanta in more than four decades, allowing metro Atlanta’s 13 sprawling counties to raise hundreds of millions in sales taxes for new transit projects and creating a new regional transit governing agency to succeed MARTA. The House and Senate must now negotiate the differences in the two.
The House passed last week what’s been dubbed the “Netflix bill,” because it included a new tax on content streaming services, to encourage broadband deployment and access in rural communities. Despite the nickname, the tax on services like Netflix were dropped before passage.
