LSA Director Dennis Prouty said much of the increase was due to capital gains taxes that were paid on state personal income tax returns that were due by April 30. Gazette Online: State sets tax revenue record in May Cedar Rapids - Iowa City - Eastern Iowa. Receipts for sales, use and corporate income taxes also were up last month and the state took in an extra $11. Prouty said this month's positive growth brought the year-to-date increase in state tax receipts to 6.8 percent over the same...

Preliminary data show, among other things, a rise in tobacco, pot use among youths and young adults More Oregon youth in eighth through 11th grade smoke marijuana than tobacco cigarettes, according to new information released today by the Oregon Department of Human Services. Subscribe . Contact Us . Calendar . Obituaries . Archives . Public Notices . Business Directory . Blogs . Multimedia. Preliminary data show, among other things, a rise in tobacco, pot use among youths and young adults...

There was speculation that Michigan's lawmakers might stay in session all weekend and come up with a comprehensive program that would involve some new revenue. The "Social Security money in question is actually the money the state gets every year from the 1998 settlement of a multi-state lawsuit against the big tobacco companies. Lawmakers reduced both state income taxes and business taxes in the 1990s without cutting programs or getting money elsewhere. As a result, the budget never...

Growers have delayed setting some tobacco because of the parched soil, he said, and at least one farmer started irrigating to keep his tobacco alive. The dry spell follows a freeze in early April that inflicted at least $70 million in crop losses statewide, hitting winter wheat, peach and apple crops the hardest. Statewide precipitation shortfalls range from 6-to-9 inches in the south to 2-to-4 inches in the west, said Tom Priddy, a University of Kentucky extension agricultural...

Cigarette makers are split over whether to support it, the newspaper said. More than 20 percent of all American adults use tobacco. The report's authors say tobacco is a unique product in that it kills more Americans than AIDS, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, homicides, suicides, car accidents and fires combined. USA Today reports the panel recommends raising the tax on cigarettes by $2 a pack in an effort to reduce smoking. The scientists say they want to eliminate smoking as the public health...