January 27, 2010 06:04 PM UTC

CO Grocery Sales Tax? Corp Lobbyists Pushing One at the State Capitol

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• by: davidsirota

(This is a remarkable development, and a huge moral high ground opportunity for Democrats. Will they take it? – promoted by Colorado Pols)

NOTE: We are discussing this on AM760 this morning. Listen in on your radio dial or online at www.am760.net and call in to join the discussion.

Should Colorado join Alabama and Mississippi as the only states to apply full sales tax to groceries? That’s what corporate lobbyists are pushing at the state capitol, according to the Denver Post:

Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, and Sen. Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge, both members of the Joint Budget Committee, said they had been approached by officials with the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry to talk about alternatives to eliminating business tax breaks. Ferrandino said one idea the industry association raised was to partially eliminate or temporarily suspend the state’s sales-tax exemption on food purchased for home consumption. Colorado enacted the exemption in 1979.

I’m not against raising taxes – not at all. In fact, I think we need to raise some taxes on the wealthy in this state. But creating a new grocery tax on the bare necessities – a new tax that would be one of the single most regressive taxes in America? Um, no.

What’s amazing – and grotesque – is the lobbying for this. Here we have corporate lobbyists so anathema to the concept of shared sacrifice – so against temporarily suspending a few of their few special tax loopholes – that they are willing to advocate for an immoral tax on the bare necessities of life, a tax that would hit every single Coloradoan – and hit those at the lowest end of the income ladder the hardest.

As I said, it’s grotesque.