WBRZ - Baton Rouge

BATON ROUGE - A nonpartisan watchdog group says Gov. Bobby Jindal's tax code rewrite could cost the state as much as $650 million in lost revenue as currently proposed.

The Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana says Jindal's plan appears to fall short of the claim that it is "revenue neutral."

PAR says the plan relies on revenue figures from 2011, when the state was struggling with the recession. PAR says those figures appear to skew the data used to devise Jindal's plan.

Jindal proposes doing away with state income taxes in exchange for higher and more state sales taxes.

Tim Barfield, the governor's leader on the tax rewrite, disagreed with PAR's analysis. He says the 2011 data was a starting point but not the only figures used to craft the plan.