Revenues are up.

• Author: Morton, Heather
• Position: TRENDS & TRANSITIONS - Brief article

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If the Federal Insurance Office recommends moving away from state-based insurance regulation to an optional system of federal regulation, states could lose a significant source of revenue.

The federal Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires the insurance office to study and report on how to improve and modernize insurance regulation.

State governments impose sales taxes on insurance premiums of the companies that write policies in their states. And recently, those revenues have been on the rise, according to the U.S. Census' 2011 Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections.

States collected a total of $16.4 billion in insurance premium sales taxes in FY 2011. That is $593.8...