Should a sales tax on services -- the crew that trims your lawn, your yoga instructor and the person who watches your kids -- be part of the solution to California's $16 billion (so far) budget deficit?

That notion is again being floated by folks like Lucien Wulsin Jr., executive director of the Insure the Uninsured Project, and Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters.

Some states do tax services like dating agencies, dog groomers, bowling alleys. Other potentially taxable services include care delivered at hospitals and by physicians,  tanning and tattoo parlors and nursing home care. Wulsin also questions whether any true value is delivered by conferring special tax status on nonprofit hospitals.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in DC put out a good position paper in 2003, raising positives and negatives -- like is a state equipped to implement such a tax? Not too shabby a question given the layoffs and program cuts under way in California.

And also in 2003, Donald R. Doerr of the California Taxpayers Association drilled holes in the idea in a commentary available online. His criticisms: It discriminates against small business, will compel companies to buy such things as accounting services out of state, will discriminate against the elderly who are unable to do their own yard work, will soak the poor who drive older cars in regular need of repair and be susceptible to the lobbying of special interests seeking exemptions.

While everyone (selectively, allowing for yacht loopholes) hunts for money -- sustaining or otherwise -- to bridge the deficit, one interesting place to visit is the California Board of Equalization website ( www.boe.ca.gov). Check out the current list of the state's top 250 sales and use tax debtors -- some go back 20 years and the totals involve many tens of millions of dollars.

Better than taxing day-care services or your next haircut?

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