No new taxes

That was the message among L.A. businesses on how to deal with the state's $15.2 billion budget deficit, the worst in history. The L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce took a poll of its members on ways of dealing with that number and 65 percent supported a combination of spending cuts and tax/fee increases. But when the poll drills down to what kinds of tax/fee increases would be acceptable, the bizfolks start to bristle. By sizable margins, they're opposed to increasing the state sales tax, expanding the sales tax to services, and reducing the dependent tax credit. They would be all right with an out-of-state Internet sales tax and reinstating the vehicle license fee to pre-1998 levels (remember how Schwarzenegger made such a big deal over repealing the "car tax" during his campaign?). Anyway, the chamber released the poll results this morning in Sacramento, where a bunch of its members are on a lobbying mission. As a body, the chamber supports targeted budget cuts that "should permanently reduce long-term obligations rather than be short-term fixes for accounting purposes."