Poor people use an extraordinary amount of state services, they argue, like welfare or school subsidized programs, subsidized mass transit and so on. The sales tax — and especially the sales tax on food — may be the only tax that they really pay, these people say.

And since everyone, no matter how poor, should contribute in some way to society and government, the food tax is the best way to have the poor contribute.

That argument has always seemed very Grinch-like to me. Poor people still have to buy clothes, which are taxed. They like to eat a prepared meal at times, too. Restaurant meals would remain taxed under all these proposals.

The property taxes on the apartments or houses that the poor rent are built into their monthly payments. If they can scrounge up enough money to buy a $2,000 beat-up used car, they pay the same percent sales tax on it as does the rich man who buys an $80,000 Mercedes.

The sales tax on food is punitive. It is even mean-spirited.

As the legislators haggle over exactly how much of a tax cut to give next year, as they examine the best way to reduce the sales tax on food, let's hope they keep their eye on the goal: Remove all of the sales tax — state, local, transit, ZAP, all of them — from food.

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Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com