One Utah

I’m hearing rumors that House Speaker Greg Curtis (reelected last month 20 votes!) is playing games with the state sales tax on food.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Here’s the background:  In Utah, there are three separate sales taxes - State, County, and City.  Each component supports different government entities.  For instance, in Salt Lake City our curent tax rate is 6.6%.  About 2/3 is the State portion; the balance is divided between county (i.e. ZAP tax) and Salt Lake City.  Most cities in Utah get the majority of their income from sales tax.  I attended a hearing earlier this year in which the city manager of Roy (IIRC) said that without the city portion of sales tax, Roy would go bankrupt (Roy may be a somewhat extreme case but they are not unique; Roy’s population is small compared to the number of people who shop within the city limits).  Something like 75% of Utahn favor removing the sales tax from food.

In 2006, the State Legislature voted to removed 1/2 the state portion of Sales Tax from food.  This year, the Legislature has a proposal to remove the balance of the state portion.  Speaker Greg Curtis is unofficially floating an idea to cut things like the ZAP tax in exchange for cutting the state portion of tax on food.

Speaker Curtis is playing a sleazy, typically Republican game with taxes.  Essentially, he’s saying, “I’ll support cutting this unpopular tax only if you’ll support cutting this popular tax.”

Sales tax on food is the most regressive form of taxation; it falls most heavily on those least able to afford it.  For obvious reasons, I support the complete removal of sales tax on food; let’s be very clear, removing the sales tax on food completely would be offset by a .25% increase in sales tax on other items (IOW, when you buy a shirt, you’d pay 6.85% rather than 6.6%). 

The ZAP tax - strongly supported by Salt Lake County voters - supports the local artistic community.  For years now, conservatives have done almost everything in their power to cut any tax money going to the arts community.  Given that Salt Lake County voters have consistently supported the ZAP tax, it’s difficult to see Speaker Curtis’ proposal as anything other than an attack on the right of voters’ to determine the use of their tax dollars.

By floating this approach, Curtis’ is attacking the three pillars of elected government - it should be representative (the people of Utah want the sales tax removed from food and they have voted for the ZAP tax repeatedly), it should be responsive to the needs of the people (removing sales tax from food helps everyone purchase basic necessities) and it should be responsible (the ZAP tax allows us to invest in the community in ways that help our community).

Important Note:

Since I started this post yesterday, I received an email telling me that the Republican majority in Utah’s legislature isn’t planning on taking any action on sales tax on food this year.  In Whistling Past Dixie, Thomas Schaller suggests that such inaction on important issues and focus on largely symbolic issues (i.e. I’m sure the leg. will have a wide array of gay-bashing and anti-choice bills this year - they always do!) is typical of traditional Southern political culture. 

This entry was posted Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 9:24 am and is filed under Conservative Sell-Outs, Elections, Political Corruption, Republicans, This Blog, Utah Politics. Both comments and pings are currently closed.