Tennesseans dispute the need for a food tax cut (Page 2 of 3)
April 5, 2007By:
The “porn tax”, officially known as the Food Tax-Adult Materials Tax Swap bill, has not accumulated much popularity with its intention to halve the food tax by attaching a 25 percent duty fee on all items or services pertaining to adult cabarets, escorts, sex toys and other “adult” paraphernalia.
However, another swap bill, the tobacco tax, is supported by Bredesen and picking up steam, wrangling supporters from both sides of the aisle. It suggests that tax on cigarettes be raised to 64 cents per pack. Today, the tax on a pack of cigarettes in Tennessee is 20 cents; only Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina have lower rates. With the proposed increase for the tobacco-food tax swap, the new rate would change the state’s ranking from fourth lowest to 20th lowest tobacco tax in the country, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
Dave McIlwaine, Knoxville chairman of Tennessee for Fair Taxation, is frustrated with the state’s significantly lower tobacco tax rate compared to the national average.
“Umm, can you say tobacco lobby? It’s always been strong in this state,” he says. “It’s always been lobbied to fall under the agriculture department and killed in committee.”
In fact, the Tennessean reported March 27 that many of the legislators on key committees reviewing Bredesen’s cigarette tax proposal have received campaign contributions from political action committees with ties to tobacco companies like Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds.
All the while, Tennessee has the second highest food tax in the country. If lawmakers pass the swap, the state’s ranking on the food tax rate would drop from second to sixth.
“We make no bones about it,” McIlwaine says. “We want to see real tax reform, but in the meantime, [the tax swap] stands on its own.”
McIlwaine speculates that the governor’s obstinacy toward food tax reform is a fear that a food tax cut and a tobacco tax increase would inevitably force Tennessee to become an income tax state.
Lenker has made no mention of such an argument, however. Instead, she claims the governor thinks the underprivileged will benefit more from tax-funded programs rather than a break on food costs.
“It’s important to remember that the poorest Tennesseans pay no sales tax on groceries — 1 million people receive food stamps and [Women Infant Children] assistance,” she says.
Thirty states do not place a sales tax on groceries, and five states have no sales tax whatsoever; therefore, 35 states do not tax food, leaving 15 states that do.
The Cost of Eating
Christina Kretchik, director of Tennessee anti-hunger advocacy group MANNA, disagrees with Lenker’s logic.
“It is a huge and horrible misconception,” she says. “We’re very grateful that [food stamp] services exist, but there are also enough people who fall into that not-quite-poor-enough category. I mean, I’ve heard stories where an individual’s salary was literally $1 off from the cut-off and was denied [food stamps].”
Kretchik says surveys have shown 85 percent of Tennesseans who receive food stamps run out by the third week of the month, and of that group, 20 to 25 percent run out of stamps by the end of the first week.
“Food stamps are calculated to look like [the recipients] have more money than they actually do,” she says.
As far as under-fed Americans go, Tennessee is, by no means, the hungriest state. However, that does not mean that hunger isn’t still an issue that many residents find disconcerting. According to a survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, 12 percent of Tennesseans experienced at least one day in a year in which they were unsure of how they would get the next meal. Four percent were unsure of how they would get the next meal and went without food for at least a day.
