BATON ROUGE - Changes that Gov. John Bel Edwards made to his business tax plan in hopes of lessening criticism have cut in half the estimate of what the tax will raise.
    
That makes his budget-stabilizing tax package hundreds of millions of dollars short of what Edwards wanted to generate.
    
When the Democratic governor first introduced a plan to tax companies' gross receipts, the administration expected it to bring in $800 million to $900 million a year.
    
With new carve-outs for certain businesses, Revenue Secretary Kimberly Robinson says the bill would raise an estimated $400 million annually.
    
The Edwards administration wants lawmakers to tweak the tax proposal, boosting the estimate to $550 million.
    
The tax bill gets its first legislative hearing Monday in the House Ways and Means Committee. The proposal has little public support.