Letter to the Editor: Send This Meals Tax Back to the Kitchen

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Hard choices are being made every day around kitchen tables from Ashburn to Aldie, Sterling to South Riding, Lovettsville to Lucketts. The dollars we earn have to stretch further than ever. Single-income families are being forced to become two-income families. Second and even third jobs are being sought to supplement take-home pay in an anxious fiscal climate.

Yet the task of making tough budgetary choices is being shunted from the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors onto the backs of county taxpayers in the form of a ballot initiative in November that seeks a new 4 percent sales tax on meals and beverages. Voters would be well served to reject the measure; in fact, Loudouners have already shown that they have no appetite for a meals tax by rejecting it twice — by landslide margins.

What’s clear is that this tax would unduly burden our small businesses, inhibit tourism, affect hiring decisions, potentially reduce restaurant workers’ tips and simply serve up a bad deal to restaurant patrons.

What is most alarming is the regressive nature of this tax, with the burden felt most harshly by working Loudouners at the lower levels of the income scale. This is tax inequity at its worst, as highlighted in a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

A sales tax on an essential daily item such as food not only burdens the Loudoun families that can least afford it, but also can hurt county and state programs aimed at making families more self-sufficient and less dependent on government assistance, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Of course, we all share the goal of properly funding our schools, where revenue from this ballot measure is supposedly directed. Yet the reaction from the Loudoun School Board to this measure was half-baked at best, with Vice Chairman John Stevens (Potomac) saying, “I have no confidence that this measure will put a single new brick in a Loudoun County school. . . . I just want to make it clear that I think this meals tax will not have any impact in Loudoun County Public Schools.” That’s quite an indictment.

So when it comes to reviewing the menu of choices this Election Day, Loudoun voters should send this raw deal back to the kitchen and hope that no other such measures are cooked up anytime soon.

Nicholas Graham, Ashburn

Tagged: Board of Supervisors, Economy, elections, Letter to the Editor, opinions

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