Debate on food tax is really about values

Can it be that the Utah Legislature will take a serious look at removing the sales tax from food?

Repealing the food tax has been like the search for the Holy Grail.

Politicians and some citizen activists have loved to talk about it for years.

And while just the thought of it is intriguing and makes you feel kind of good, in your heart you just can't quite believe it's possible.

Now after years of talk, a few failed food-tax-removal bills and even a 1990 citizen initiative that was voted down at the ballot, in rides Indiana Jones (House Majority Whip Steve Urquhart) and his dad (House Speaker Greg Curtis) to say maybe we can reach the Grail after all.

The latest idea was actually floated by local citizen Dave Iltis before a subcommittee of the Tax Reform Task Force last spring — and in bouncing around among task force staffers and members, it was seriously put forward by Urquhart (who sits on the task force) and Curtis this past week.

Basically, the whole sales tax on unprepared food would be removed.

Unfortunately, that would cost the state and local governments around $260 million — a large amount neither group could afford.

So, says Urquhart, the Legislature would raise the state's portion of the sales tax on non-food items by 0.5 percentage points — from 4.75 percent to 5.25 percent.

The current 1 percent local option sales tax — adopted by about all of the 237 cities and towns and the 29 counties — would go to 1.1 percent on non-food items.

The local "boutique" sales taxes, like the Utah Transit Authority, the ZAP tax for zoos, arts and parks, the resort town tax and the rural hospital tax would stay the same.

Raising the non-food sales tax rate for state and local governments still wouldn't cover all of the $260 million.

Accordingly, Utahns would see a $44 million sales tax cut — the state would lose $36 million; local governments lose $8 million altogether.

The state has been awash in surplus tax revenues the past two years — an estimated $600 million. Most of last year's $400 million surplus has been spent.

But already in the first quarter of the current fiscal year the state has brought in $55 million more than anticipated just seven months ago. If the revenues keep growing like that, lawmakers could certainly afford a $44 million tax cut in the 2006 Legislature, now just two months away.

Yet wait, there are other legislators who want to give other kinds of tax "reform," which suspiciously look like tax cuts:

— $32 million to businesses (and maybe a lot more) for economic development.

— $10 million to $175 million in personal income tax cuts, depending on which "reform" plan is adopted.