With a series of new taxes and difficult reductions in services, the hard-fought budget passed last night by the Washington Legislature won't win many fans in the state. One exception: custom software makers, who can breath a sigh of relief that their services won't be subject to sales tax, as previously proposed.

They probably won't be celebrating the victory over a few beers.

New taxes introduced in the budget include a 50-cent levy on every gallon of "big-brand" beer (not including microbrews), which translates into about 28 cents per six pack. The tax is scheduled to go into effect in June, along with controversial provisions extending the state's sales tax to gum, candy and bottled water.

The sales tax on custom software would have affected software firms and consultants that work on websites, business applications, and other specialized programs. The state's baseline sales tax is 6.5 percent, which comes in addition to any taxes levied at the local level, bringing the total to around 10 percent in some cases.

Custom software makers and the Washington Technology Industry Association had argued that the tax would make it tougher for them to land business and survive, by prompting their corporate clients to bring much of that work in-house, rather than pay the sales tax. The custom software tax was dropped from the version of the tax bill passed by the state House over the weekend and by the state Senate last night (PDF, 113 pages).

The WTIA stopped short of declaring complete victory. "Although it is clearly a victory for the technology and software sector to see the sales tax on custom software dropped from consideration, it will likely come back for further review," the organization warned in a blog post over the weekend.

At the same time, another sentence in the tax bill is raising concern among people who want the state to pursue tax revenue that they content Microsoft is avoiding by routing its software licensing business through Nevada. The bill includes a section that gives new instructions to the Department of Revenue based on the assumption that the Legislature wants "to require all taxpayers to pay their fair share of taxes."

Jeff Reifman, a former Microsoft employee who has been leading the campaign for the state to pursue a tax case against Microsoft, warned over the weekend that one provision of the bill could essentially grant Microsoft amnesty for any back taxes and penalties that it might later be found to owe.

That exception says that the section in question "does not apply to any tax periods ending before May 1, 2010, that were included in a completed field audit conducted by the department."

Microsoft said in a previous statement that it "generates a significant amount of direct and indirect tax revenue for the state" and pays "all due taxes in all jurisdictions in which we operate." The company last week released details of a University of Washington study about Microsoft's impact on the state economy.