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Do you live in DC?
A Bag Idea: DC’s Newest Tax Hurts Businesses, Consumers
by Patrick Tyrrell
DC lawmakers tried to sugarcoat the five cent per bag tax on store bought items, calling it a fee rather than a tax. The tax has been in effect in the District of Columbia since New Year’s Day. Stories in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other media have reported of widespread disaffection with the tax among people in DC. The lawmakers behind the tax surely do not understand economics. Furthermore, the legalese used to draft the law would provoke laughter if it was not so deserving of condemnation.
Consumers must pay five cents per bag on any item bought in a store that sells food. The founders of this great country would question the logic to the law because it makes no sense. For the infraction of stepping foot in our Nation’s Capitol, and having the gall to buy something, you must pay to clean up the Anacostia River. Furthermore business owners are prohibited by law from paying the tax for you. It would only make sense to a person who sees all economic activity as an opportunity to siphon off money for the nanny state.
The problems with the tax are many.
People are shopping in Virginia and Maryland for their groceries instead of DC and are being inconvenienced.
Small, irrational taxes such as this one often start off small, but grow larger and are never retired. If the Anacostia River was to become a pristine nature preserve, this tax would not disappear if history is any indication.
Many stores sell a small amount of food but mostly non-food items. They are being encouraged to end the food side of their enterprise, or hurt their business. This is an affront to their freedom to transact as they choose.
The DC Council member, Tommy Wells, who sponsored the bill apparently doesn’t understand that he is injecting himself in between every private-market food sales transaction in the city. The business owners have every right to have a bone to pick with him as he is alienating their customers. Wells though said, “I have not heard it being a hardship on retail establishments. There has been some customer concerns, but it seems since the fee is charged to the customer and not the business, that really doesn’t make any sense.”
Then, there are the true victims of the tax, the Washington DC local grocery store, and restaurant owners, and the poorer residents of DC who can travel less easily to nearby states to shop. The grocery store owners and fast food franchisees in DC are entrepreneurs who run their own businesses in a country where they are free to do so. Now the DC government is piling on one more regulation in an already tangled pile of regulations onto the backs of the DC entrepreneurs. It’s too much.
The biggest losers as a result of the tax, if not the business owners who may have to close up shop, are the poorer residents of DC. To them the dollars they spend on grocery bags that used to be free really add up. And what are they getting in return for it? Only the promise to clean a river that they did not ask to clean. It is not them, after all, who polluted the river. If people want to clean the river, let them start their own non-profit organization and get those who believe in the cause to go at it or try to find the real polluters of the stream who are not local grocers or people without automobiles.
Here is the onerous wording of the tax itself:
Sec. 4. Establishment of fee.
(a)(1) A consumer making a purchase from a retail establishment shall pay at the time of purchase a fee of $.05 for each disposable carryout bag.
(2) A retail establishment shall not advertise or hold out or state to the public or to a customer directly or indirectly that the reimbursement of the fee or any part thereof to be collected by the retail establishment will be assumed or absorbed by the retail establishment or otherwise refunded to the customer.
(3) All retail establishments shall indicate on the consumer transaction receipt the number of disposable carryout bags provided and the total amount of fee charged.
(b)(1) (A) Each retail establishment shall retain $.01 of each $.05 fee collected; provided, that an establishment that chooses to offer a carryout bag credit program to its customers, as set forth in subparagraph (B) of this paragraph, shall retain an additional $.01 from each fee collected, for a total of $.02 for each $.05 fee collected.
(B) A retail establishment shall retain an additional $.01 of each $.05 fee for a carryout program which:
(i) Credits the consumer no less than $.05 for each carryout bag provided by the consumer for packaging their purchases, regardless of whether that bag is paper, plastic, or reusable;
(ii) Is prominently advertised at each checkout register; and
(iii) Reflects the total credit amount on the consumer transaction receipt.
(C) The fees retained by the retail establishment under this paragraph shall not be classified as revenue and shall be tax-exempt for the purposes of Chapters 18, 20, and 27B of le 47 of the District of Columbia Official Code.
(D) The fees retained by the retail establishment shall be excluded from the definition of retail sale under D.C. Official Code § 47-2001(n)(2) and from the definition of gross receipts under D.C. Official Code § 47-2761(5).
(E) The fees to be remitted to the District under subsection (b)(2) of this section shall be added to other tax payments in determining whether the electronic payment requirement under D.C. Official Code § 47-4402(c) applies.
(2) The remaining amount of each fee collected shall be paid to the Office of Tax and Revenue and shall be deposited in the Anacostia River Cleanup and Protection Fund established by section 6(a).
(c) The Office of Tax and Revenue shall develop rules for frequency and method for reporting and transmitting the fees, as set forth in subsection (a) of this section, to the District.
(d) Except to the extent of any inconsistency with this act, the same provisions to le 47 of the District of Columbia Official Code that are applicable to the gross sales tax shall govern the administration, collection, and enforcement of the fee set forth in subsection (a) of this section.
Do you live in DC?
I wonder if the author can provide any evidence that people are traveling to shop outside of DC just to avoid paying 50 cents extra on thier grocery shopping.
If you assume the average consumer will buy the better product for the best price, then you would conclude people traveling into DC would buy what they needed before going into the city on the hill. SA has a tourist tax downtown. When I worked downtown I would get all my stuff before getting down there.
The average consumer isn't going to give much of a about 50 cents for ten bags.
it's a god-da** tax increase!
according to the article it could grow to 52 cents..
They keep adding up but some of you never think of that. Some of you never look at how much you pay in taxes as a whole. Some of you still think america is "free". Soon there will be a cart tax to put your groceries in or tax for the bags to put fruit and veggies in. The goverrnment wants a bigger cut from the businesses to pay for bull the country does not want. Plastic bags will become a billion dollar business for the governement and they did absolutly nothing to earn that.
And Georgie, 50 cents a week might not be a big deal to you but considering DC is one of the poorest cities in our nation it could be to them. If a business wants to flip the bill for the consumer they should have the right. What do you do for a living?
I make an honest living jack..let's just leave it at that... I'd like for you to find one person who thinks America is free.. do you ever think before you post?
Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave,
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave![12]
[edit] Additional Civil War period lyrics
In indignation over the start of the Civil War, Oliver Wendell Holmes[13] added a fifth stanza to the song in 1861 which appeared in songbooks of the era.[14]
When our land is illumined with liberty's smile,
If a foe from within strikes a blow at her glory,
Down, down with the traitor that tries to defile
The flag of the stars, and the page of her story!
By the millions unchained,
Who their birthright have gained
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave,
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.
Yeah that's what I figured the author did...assumed.
I doubt anyone from the foundation of this country thought it was "free" except for maybe a few of the privileged and wealthy. I doubt slaves in 1787 thought America was the land of the "free".
"it's just a 'little' tax increase...no biggie man. Quit complaining. It's for your own good!"
Can you name a tax increase that has not had these words accompany it?
"It's only 1% tax on your income...quit complaining. It's for your own good."
ok, tell us which tax increases came with those words.
Do you buy groceries in DC?
The first quote...every tax increase.
The second quote...the income tax.
so you made it up
Last edited by George Gervin's Afro; 03-07-2010 at 11:41 PM.
I do think it's somewhat re ed that the owner can't pay for the tax. I mean, as long as the tax gets paid, who cares?
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