HB 1206 passed and the governor signed it on Friday.
It makes an appropriation for emergency food assistance grants and repeals the sales tax on food refund program.
Now if we can just get rid of that pesky food tax!
When you listen to this speech by MLK, you can’t help to think about our current situation, except it applies to ALL of the working class, not just minorities.
“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will only be an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.“Â -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Let’s Do Something About Why People are Hungry.
There are many reasons. One is South Dakota’s tax on groceries.
• Grocery prices are up! The state can’t undo the high prices, but it could help by getting the tax off.
• Times are tough!
• Solutions are available! especially for the state portion (4%) of the food tax. This would help middle- and lower-income people. Most states do not tax groceries. No state bordering South Dakota taxes food.
• The food tax refund program is not the answer. It now reaches only 264 households in the whole state, despite much greater need. These types of programs are inherently ineffective.
• Cutting the food tax is the right thing to do. This tax hurts. What people pay annually in food tax (state + city tax) could buy their food for 3 weeks.
What to do? Enough people need to ask state legislators to start cutting the food tax. To join an email network of advocates, send your name, address & phone to: ryebread@breadrising.org.
South Dakotans ended the tax on medical services and outlawed paying to use toilets. You don’t pay a tax before you can vote or before you can breathe. No one should have to pay a tax before they can eat.
Bread for the World-South Dakota • September 13, 2011
Bread for the World-South Dakota neither supports nor opposes the South Dakota ballot initiative to raise the sales tax.  We realize that it raises funds and specifies them for important causes.  However, it also raises the sales tax rate on a number of life’s basic necessities.
We believe that both supporters and opponents can agree that sales tax on groceries should not be raised–regardless of whether the initiative passes and the tax goes up on other things. Even without adding additional tax on food, the initiative would still raise over $160 million for schools and Medicaid – a significant sum.
The ballot initiative, as written, allows a way to keep the increase from being applied to food, because it applies the additional 1% sales tax only to items that are taxed at the 4% state rate. Thus, if the 2012 legislature would take any amount off food, even 1/2%, the food tax would not go up if the petition passes.
In this case, the food tax (state and local sales taxes combined), which currently costs families annually enough to buy 3 weeks worth of food, would not go up to 3-and-a-half weeks. It would keep the tax on a basic can of powdered baby formula below $1.
Even a one-half-percent reduction would be an acknowledgement of the current economic struggle.
This position neither supports nor opposes the initiative. Â However, it is our hope that both supporters and opponents of the initiative will agree that keeping the tax on food as low as possible would be helpful for children, families, seniors and nursing homes, for good health, and for the economy.
MY THOTS: Taxing food more to fund healthcare and education seems a bit assbackwards considering good nutrition helps students learn better and contributes to a longer life. But solving problems by going to root seems to easy. Nevermind.
Okay, so the state department of revenue just chooses to ignore a state law for decades (instead of just telling the legislature to fix it) Then all of sudden decides they must enforce it? Then says if you want to skirt the law, you can go thru a complicated application process for something you may do a couple of times a year? Then, the kicker, since they can’t tax people who receive free food (from food banks and churches) they have to tax the food these orgs are giving away? WOW! Talk about having to pay extra for a undercooked shit sandwich;
About 275 organizations statewide that give away food to needy people might be forced to pay a long-unenforced sales tax, prompting some to worry the agencies simply will stop providing food to the poor.
At issue is a handling fee that agencies pay to the organization that supplies them with food.
A state law outlining the taxes has been on the books for decades. But it wasn’t until late last year that an audit discovered the maintenance fees existed and needed to be taxed, said Jan Talley, director of the state’s Business Tax Division.
“We are charged with enforcing the statutes of South Dakota,” she said.
Your charged with enforcing a law that you haven’t enforced for decades? So instead of just getting the powers of be to fix it, you have to be the assmunch instead and enforce it? Seriously?! Pierre is freaking broken, and this is further proof.
But the best part is the Argue Endorser’s online poll today;
I would like to meet these clowns that think it is okay to tax orgs that give food to the needy. I have a sandwich I would like to feed them. And it’s not made of turds.
This is a guest post by Cathy Brechtelsbauer from the local chapter of Bread for the World
July 30, 2011. There’s another article in the Argus today on a proposed ballot initiative to raise the sales tax and we still can’t tell if it includes the sales tax on food. The initiative’s wording is not yet announced, but it is a cause for worry that two or three articles on the topic have not mentioned exempting food from the increase.
Planners of the initiative represent education and healthcare organizations. They hope to raise $175 million for education and Medicaid. Funds are needed because of cuts from the last legislative session and governor.
A 1% sales tax increase may seem like simplest idea for an initiative, but South Dakota’s sales tax applies to food! In 2010 each per cent on food (home food, not prepared food) raised an estimated $14 million.
Background info: The “streamlining” sales tax rules allow for tax rates on food and utilities to be different from the general sales tax rate, even zero percent. Lately some states have taken advantage of this and have been stepping down their food tax, like Arkansas. None of our neighbor states tax food. North Dakota has been phasing out the tax on home heating bills.
At least food be exempted in this initiative. By exempting food the tax increase would inflict somewhat less hurt on those the initiative is trying to help. There’s something strange about raising sales tax to help nursing homes: South Dakota nursing homes (unlike hospitals) pay sales tax on all of their food and supplies. A sales tax increase would cost them dearly and also unduly hit their workers, who are not exactly rolling in dough. An exemption for food would reduce the initiative’s negative impact. Similarly for the South Dakota teachers with incomes low enough that they too struggle to cover the basics for their families.
The biggest concern might be the impact on nutrition: child nutrition, senior nutrition, diet-related diseases. The food tax in South Dakota is already equivalent to three weeks worth of food in a year. Teachers too often see the effects of child hunger on learning. Child hunger is probably worse in summers without school meals. Relatively few kids make it to the summer lunch sites. Healthcare workers see how hard it is for people to eat healthy.
You can add to those issues the impact of the food tax on already strained local food charities; regressive taxation; wealth disparity; potential shrinking of the safety net looming from federal budget cutters and cappers. And with an almost useless state food tax refund program, you can see why some of us will be unwilling to support a ballot initiative that raises the food tax, even though we care deeply about education and healthcare.
Better ideas for a sales tax initiative: Even if the initiative would forego the food’s portion of the tax ($14 million in 2010), it could still raise a big sum. Better yet would be a reduction in the food tax, however slight. Either of these approaches would signal a recognition of the struggles of nursing homes and ordinary families trying to put food on the table so their kids’ tummies aren’t growling when the teacher is trying to teach.
Cathy Brechtelsbauer, Bread for the World, Sioux Falls
The most important office of government is citizen. -Justice Louis Brandeis
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