Does it seem grocery prices are out of control? You’re not imagining it. Just prior to federal websites being frozen by the “radical Democrats,” [quoting from the agency website], USDA reported food prices in September rose higher than the average for all other consumer items.
Not helping in Idaho is our fixation with taxing basic nutrition. It is a monstrously cruel policy I’ve argued against my entire adult life, but Idaho’s business lobby is convinced it needs the guaranteed revenue and stability of taxing everyone’s daily sustenance.
Even when leading Idaho’s powerful statewide business organization, I found myself lonely in suggesting grocery taxation was immoral. And yet that conclusion is not subjective. The National Institutes of Health were asked back in 2013 whether taxing junk food might help solve obesity. They concluded that, even if you ignore inherent ethical concerns, it will not work as an obesity fix.
Their study concluded that people purchase the best food they can afford. The poor purchase “junk food” (defined as foods high in sugars, salt and unsaturated fats) primarily because it is affordable. Making food (even “junk food”) more expensive doesn’t drive purchasing “up” the ladder of health... it pushes people further down that ladder.
The connection between food taxation and bad health is well-documented. In 2021, researchers at Cornell and Duke cooperated on a study of grocery taxes. They found that every one percent increase in the cost of food (one cent increase in grocery taxes) increased the food insecurity (likelihood of dietary deficiency) in the poor by .87 percent. That’s nearly a one-to-one correlation.
The arguments for the tax are weak. Allow me to knock them down for you.
“Idaho Government needs the stability grocery taxes provide.” The questionable word here is “need.” But the rest is grotesquely true. Grocery taxes yield revenue when everything else doesn’t. When markets are down, we still tax your food. When jobs are disappearing, we tax the family’s dinner table. When the boss can’t justify any raises, you still have to budget to pay more tax on food that is more expensive.
“The Idaho Grocery Credit adequately compensates for the sales tax.” This is only true for the poorest of the poor who buy less expensive food. For them, it’s a “lend your money to the government and you’ll get it back next April” proposition. This enables no healthier food buying decisions. For middle-class and wealthier Idahoans, the statement is just untrue.
“It is our only way to tax the vacationing Californians.” This one is just a lie. We have multiple taxes designed to capture tourist dollars, everything from vacation resorts to RV campsites.
True, the desperate tourist who absolutely cannot go another day without Doritos will pay the tax. But that barely covers the loss of revenue when Idahoans returning from Missoula bought tortilla chips there instead of paying 6 percent more crossing the state line.
The economist who pioneered “free market economics” and who influenced all of America’s founding thinkers had a seminal observation about taxation. The fundamental premise of Adam Smith’s 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations, is that “whatever a nation taxes, it discourages.”
If you tax productivity, you discourage productivity. That is why Idaho has a “production exemption,” so our sales tax policy doesn’t discourage in-state manufacturing. Buy salt to season your food, and you’ll pay tax. Buy salt for an industrial water softener, you won’t.
Why tax sustenance for a healthy life? If we don’t want to discourage manufacturing, why would we discourage healthy food purchasing by factory workers?
A citizen’s initiative is currently circulating entitled, “Idaho Exempt Food From Sales and Use Taxes.” It needs 70,000 signatures by next April, and the question will appear on the November 2026 ballot, where, according to polling by the Mountain States Policy Center, an estimated 90 percent of Idahoans intend to vote for it.
So go out and sign that petition today.
(2) comments
He didn't start with the rising cost of food because he needed to start with "radical Democrats".
Personally I think your argument is ridiculous. Why don't you begin with the rising cost of food. Naturally this all depends on where you shop and as you say what foods you buy. But food rising costs across the board are due to what. Try the lame brain that you voted for who told you that the other countries pay for tariffs. No they don't. The American consumer pays, that is the people that buy the products. The consumer doesn't buy the product from the seller, the retailer does. And the retailer passes on the cost you the consumer. Why does he do that? He does it because he has to pay worker wages, transportation storage and distibution cost. If costs go 25% like Idiot Trump dictates then the food you buy is going up as well. Cutting the sales tax is not going to reduce the price of the food you lame brain Republican. Cutting sales tax is going to reduce services as if they have not already been reduced enough.
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