David Shafer’s first legislation as the ranking leader of the Senate is a pair of proposed constitutional amendments that would a) cap the state income tax at its current 6 percent and b) a measure that prohibit any further increase in the sales tax – unless it were used for income tax reduction or infrastructure improvements.

“This creates a path for us to move from the income tax to the sales tax,” the Senate president pro tem said this afternoon. The income tax currently accounts for about half the state's tax revenue.

Other uses of the sales tax by local governments would be grandfathered in, but in essence, the state government would be laying primary claim to retail sales as a future funding mechanism.

The legislation is certain to be compared with the effort by former House speaker Glenn Richardson to shift the state to a sales tax, but that attempt also would have broadened the sales tax to include services – such as haircuts and legal advice.

Shafer’s sales tax resolution, S.R. 412, doesn’t pick that fight, and makes no mention of increasing the reach of the sales tax.

S.R. 415, the income tax leg of Shafer’s initiative, will have no trouble passing his Senate – every member of the GOP caucus has signed it. But the Duluth lawmaker said he’s not sure how fast the legislature will move – given that it doesn’t have to pass until next year.

“We want to begin a discussion,” he said.