Tea party group slams tax council plan

The Georgia Tea Party on Wednesday became the latest conservative voice to come out against a plan to overhaul Georgia’s tax structure.

In a statement, the organization -- one of several tea party groups operating in the state -- said the proposal by the Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness was neither real reform nor fair.

“The [Georgia Tea Party] supports tax simplification,” the statement reads. “However, the council’s recommendations do not simplify taxes but merely shuffle tax revenue buckets through a series of complex and sometimes arbitrary additions and subtractions of exemptions.”

The organization echoed a familiar complaint that the proposal rolls out increase to sales taxes, including sales taxes on groceries, years before rolling back income tax rates.

Last month, the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform labeled the tax council’s plan a tax hike. Following a meeting with members of the council several weeks later, Grover Norquist, founder of the group, said he was convinced the tax council intended the plan to be “revenue neutral.”

After the meeting with Norquist, the tax council's chairman, A.D. Frazier, convened the council to adopt a formal statement that the intent of the plan was not to raise additional money for the state. Frazier did not return a call for comment Wednesday following the release of the Georgia Tea Party statement.

Generally, the tax council's plan recommends cutting personal and business income taxes and raising sales and use taxes, but specific recommendations in the plan have drawn fire from across the political spectrum.