House passes sales tax deduction

WASHINGTON – A measuring allowing people to deduct their sales tax on their federal income tax returns passed the House on Thursday night, but its fate in the Senate remained uncertain as some senators vowed to kill the bill over an unrelated section on tobacco regulation.

“What would hold up this bill doesn’t have anything to do with the tax portion,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

Cantwell, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and others worked Thursday to persuade Senate colleagues to pass the bill despite their concerns over other parts of the legislation.

“I’m definitely keeping in touch with a broad set of members,” Cantwell said.

The deduction is buried in a bill originally written to end tax breaks on exports deemed illegal by the World Trade Organization.

That freed up billions that have since been earmarked for tax cuts in other areas. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers from states without income taxes pushed to overturn a 1986 tax-law revision that eliminated a federal tax deduction for state sales taxes.

“That provision, there is broad, bipartisan support for,” said Todd Webster, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

The bill provides the deduction for two years and is estimated to save Washington taxpayers $300 to $500 a year.

However, some senators remain resolute in their opposition to the bill because it does not include a proposed amendment that would give the Food and Drug Administration oversight of tobacco companies.

Sen. Edward Kennedy is “prepared to use all of the parliamentary tools available to him to defeat the bill on the Senate floor,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Democrat.

House and Senate negotiators Wednesday finished final changes to the bill, which now cannot be amended as it is goes through Congress for final approval.

Shortly after it was sent back to the House, Kennedy, Sen. Mike Dewine, R-Ohio, and a handful of other senators called the bill a sellout to tobacco companies because it did not include the FDA provision even though it provides financial assistance to tobacco farmers.

The congressional session is scheduled to end this week, and the bill will likely go to the Senate today or Saturday.