87% of Idahoans Want the Grocery Tax Repealed

I have concluded that our legislators have forgotten that they work for the people and here is why. In a recent survey, we find that “Eighty-Seven” percent of Idahoans want the Grocery Tax repealed, yet many of our legislators seem to think we are better off if we keep this tax.

Idaho is one of four states that tax groceries and has the second-highest tax rate of those four. The amount of money families get back in a grocery tax credit is only about half of what they have paid out. In House bill 231 which just passed the house they are going to give us an opportunity to get more of our tax on groceries back when we file our taxes. All you have to do is to save all of your food purchase receipts for the year and itemize them on your tax return and they will give you up to an additional $95.00 back with your refund. Idaho is beginning to sound like Washington with a governor and legislature that say they are conservative to get elected and then when in office vote like liberals.

Let me give you a little history on this grocery tax because I have been involved in this fight for many years. It was back in April of 2017 that we finally got enough legislative support to repeal the grocery tax, but it was Governor Butch Otter who vetoed the bill even while his Lt. Governor Brad Little advised him to eliminate the tax. Gov. Brad Little ran on a promise to repeal the tax but has so far reneged on this promise since he took office in early 2019. Little who is always touting how he keeps his promises appears to have forgotten about this one. Let me also tell you that it was back in 2017 when representative Mike Moyle, our current House Speaker stood next to me in a senate committee hearing and argued that the grocery tax needed to be repealed. Since then, it is Speaker Moyle who has stopped every effort to eliminate the grocery tax. This just proves once again that you can’t trust politicians.

Let me give you an example of why I’m so concerned that we don’t have a real conservative legislature. House bill 231 was about the grocery tax but only 6 of our legislators voted for Idahoans to keep their money and eliminate this egregious tax while 61 of them voted to keep the tax and the credit. Folks the grocery tax is the most regressive tax out there as it harms those in the lowest income levels. It appears that our legislators don’t really care if those low-income families have the money for decent meals. There is absolutely no empathy for those Idahoans on the lower income levels, yet we see our legislature voting for a 5% pay raise for state workers. So, everyone gets a pay raise this year and Idahoans get the shaft once again.

Idaho’s budget is full of wasteful spending and if you want to find out where they are spending our tax dollars you need to go no further than the latest Pork Report from the Idaho Freedom Foundation.

Here you will find 44 pages of more pork than you’ll find on an Iowa Pig Farm. We seem to have money for everything but the people of our state that pay the taxes. I bet that you didn’t realize Idaho’s budget has increased by 55% in the past 5 years. I challenge you to read this report and tell me that we can’t cut enough wasteful spending to eliminate the Grocery Tax. Inflation continued to rise and in the last 2 years it is up 20% which means food bills for Idahoans have risen at least that much and more in some cases.

If you ask some of our legislators or House Speaker Mike Moyle they will tell you that it is necessary to keep the grocery tax to make sure the state collects this money form illegals and tourists. Well could someone please tell me why we are concerned about taxing illegals that are not even supposed to be working in our state. As for the tourists, I believe most of our tourists that come here eat out in our restaurants so why are we taxing them for food instead of letting that money go to Idaho Businesses. Idahoans need to know the truth about this onerous grocery tax. In the last 5 years, Idahoans paid $1.6 billion in grocery taxes and only $823 million came back in tax credits which worked out to 51%. That means 49% did not come back to Idaho families and I would bet that 49% did not come from tourists or illegals so who is the fool here. Obviously, the voting public are the fools for allowing our legislators to continue this regressive tax and expand government.

We have seen in the past several weeks since President Trump took office that Elon Musk and his team of computer geeks have already found hundreds of billions of dollars of waste in our federal government agencies. In fact, we find that our tax money has been used as a piggy bank to finance the lefts NGO brigade through our USAID agency. It certainly makes you wonder just how much waste there is in our state government as we are spending just under 14 billion a year with 189 government agencies and sub-agencies. I would bet that if we had an audit of our state agencies and sub agencies we would find more waste than we wanted to know about.

Just because we have a republican legislature, and republican constitutional officers doesn’t mean that they are running our state like a conservative business and in fact we have already seen how bad they are. Does anyone remember the scandal of the $93 million of our tax dollars that mysteriously disappeared for a Health Data Exchange? Or the cost overrun on LUMA, the new administration tool being used by all of our agencies, which is expected to reach cost overruns of $100 million. We need forensic audits of all of our agencies in Idaho but especially the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Welfare. It is time for change in our state and if our current legislators and Governor don’t want to do that maybe it is time that we fired them in the next election. There is an old saying “Trust but Verify”. Well, it is high time we verified how our state government is spending our tax dollars.

I ask all of our readers to go to this site below and see what one of our truly conservative legislators has to say about the Grocery tax and who she says is responsible for stopping the repeal of this onerous sales tax.

https://glenneda.substack.com/p/grocery-tax-repeal

“We Get the Government We Deserve”