SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - A Utah lawmaker wants the state sales tax on unprepared food reinstated.
In 2007 state lawmakers reduced the sales tax on food to 1.75 percent, previously it had been taxed at the same rate as everything else: 4.70 percent. The maximum grocery tax right now is 3 percent but that could change in the next legislative session.
Several Utah lawmakers are looking at food as a way to shrink the nearly one billion dollar shortfall. Senator Howard Stephenson wants to increase the tax on food, but he plans to put the money into an income tax reduction, hoping to help Utah’s poorest citizens.
He says the states high income tax keeps new business away. “Better than any sales tax reduction is a good job because a good job means thousands and thousands of dollars and the sales tax means a couple hundred dollars.”
Either way, the food tax could be going up which means you may have to pull more and more dollars from your wallet if the sales tax is restored. The numbers on most foods are uncertain, but here are a few basic estimates:
Fruit, onions, potatoes, milk, meat, eggs and bread at a Salt Lake City grocery store, all of the non food sales taxes added together, is 6.85 percent. Remember the current grocery tax is 3 percent.
When the groceries were rang up using the current tax, the total came to $19.22. Now, we tally the same groceries at the full tax rate and it came out to be $19.94, a difference of 72 cents.
