Even though he still doesn’t have a final draft of his tax-swap plan, Gov. Bobby Jindal has launched his statewide campaign to sell his gospel of wealth. He’s hoping to generate citizen support that will convince wary lawmakers to back his proposals.

For opponents as well as those who are merely skeptical of Jindal’s plan, time is of the essence. The longer business leaders and intellectually honest lawmakers defer to Jindal by “waiting to see the bill in final form,” the more they play into the governor’s hands.

Think back to last year, when Jindal spouted platitudes about “education reform” but waited, literally, until the last possible minute to present his bills — then rammed them through the committee process within days, giving no one a fair chance to study them. The result was, among other things, an unconstitutional voucher plan with virtually no accountability.

He’s using the same strategy with his tax-swap plan. He offers vague promises of “fairness” and “broadening the base,” but he and his tax-swap point man, Tim Barfield, executive counsel for the state Department of Revenue, offer few specifics — and then only in response to legislative and public pressure for more details.

Gov. Bobby Jindal finally gave the state legislature (some of) the details of his plan to eliminate individual and corporate income taxes — which account for about $3 billion in annual revenues — without a negative impact to the state budget. As expected, Jindal's plan includes a hike in the state sales tax rate — from 4 percent to 5.88 percent — meaning Louisiana's average combined state and local taxes will be the highest in the country at about 10.75 percent. Jindal also plans to expand the sales tax base to include some services. Healthcare, education, construction, real estate, financial services, legal services, oil and gas services, and funerals will be excluded.

Food, prescription drugs and utilities will also be protected from tax hikes. As Jindal puts it, "We are going to protect food, prescription drugs and utilities from increased sales taxes." Of course, tax rates on those items are all protected by the state Constitution, so raising them (aka amending the Constitution) would ultimately require voters to approve higher tax rates on their own food, utilities and prescription drugs. Which seems unlikely.

I will present the highlights of the plan after the jump, but first I'd like to take a close look at one sentence in Jindal's speech, the statistic that justifies this tax code overhaul. The governor has repeatedly cited huge employment growth in states "without an income tax." He did so again today, in the following sentence:

“Over the last ten years, more than 60 percent of the three million new jobs in American were created by the nine states without an income tax."

This simple, seemingly straightforward declarative sentence is so loaded with half-truths and omissions it's really quite impressive. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary figures, the country added about 3.7 million jobs (later adjusted to 4.3 million) between January 2003 and December 2012. Of those, sixty percent, or 2.2 million, were, in fact added in nine states that don't have a traditional individual income tax. 1.5 million were created in Texas alone. So that much is true.

Six of those states — Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas and Washington — levy general business taxes on earnings and/or assets. The state of Texas, the great taxless success story, collected $4.6 billion in corporate franchise taxes in fiscal year 2012. South Dakota has a six percent business income tax that only applies to banks.

Two of them, Tennessee and New Hampshire, levy taxes on individual income, but only investment income. And, to be fair, neither state is getting much out of these taxes. In 2011, New Hampshire collected $77 million in revenue on its five percent dividend tax. Tennessee's six percent Hall Income Tax produced about $184 million in revenue. That's still negligible, but it's actually almost as much as Louisiana's been collecting in exorbitant, job-killing corporate income taxes, after you account for our $1.6 billion in exemptions. (In pure dollars, we have the third most expensive corporate exemptions in the country. Considering the only states that offer higher corporate income tax exemptions are New York and California, Louisiana's $1.6 billion is certainly the highest as a percentage of the state economy and state budget.)

Only two states, Nevada and Wyoming, are as tax pure as Jindal wishes Louisiana to be. And one of them collects $800-$900 million annually in gambling taxes.

(Read Jindal's plan after the jump)