Removing sales tax on food would contribute to obesity

Sixty-five years ago the most serious public health problem in America was smoking. Since then — thanks in large measure to a heavy tax on cigarettes — the incidence of smoking has been more than cut in half. Today the No. 1 health problem is excess weight and obesity. In an important sense, food consumption has become a vice, calling for, if anything, a major tax increase.

Why, then, when the cost of food as a percentage of the average family's income is at an all-time low, and when most Americans — including the poor — simply eat too much, are our political leaders proposing to subsidize this vice through preferential sales tax treatment? Answer: Populist pandering. Everyone eats, so everyone would appear to get a tax cut — oblivious, of course, to any offsetting tax increases or lost governmental services.

Health authorities say we should eat more fruits and vegetables, whole-grains and milk (while eating less of almost everything else). So why not simply eliminate the sales tax on those designated items while leaving the sales tax intact on all other foods? That would impose a smaller fiscal burden to be made up somehow and send an affirmative health message.

Also, it is conceptually similar to what then-gubernatorial candidate Jon Huntsman Jr. suggested as his fall-back position on this subject, i.e., to limit the tax exclusion to "meat and potatoes," which I interpreted as "food basics."

There are also strong fiscal policy objections to eliminating the sales tax on food. In general, consumption taxes, such as sales taxes, are preferred over income taxes because the former tax what is taken out of the economy rather than what is put into it. Sales taxes also tend to encourage savings and an improvement in the balance of trade.

One fallacy in evaluating sales tax fairness is to focus on one component to the exclusion of others. For example, it is said that the sales tax on food is regressive because the poor spend a larger share of their budgets on food than do those who are better off. Never mentioned is the fact that other sales tax components, e.g., the tax on new automobiles, are highly progressive.

Another important principle of sound taxation is that the base should be as broad as possible so that the rate can be as low as possible. Obviously the exclusion from taxation of a major element of the normal household budget flies right in the face of that objective.

An often-heard argument against the food tax is that necessities for life should not be taxed. On those grounds, a strong case can be made for reducing the taxes that comprise 10 percent (combined Salt Lake City and state) of our winter gas bills.