Kansas Genius: If We Cut Taxes On Groceries People Will Just Buy Food All The Time
Holy bejesus, wonders never cease. Look, ma, we found a Republican what does NOT want to cut taxes! Yes, you read that right. Kansas state Sen. Jeff Melcher (R-Really, we checked) does NOT support the bill that just passed the state Senate to cut the sales tax on food from 6.3 percent to 4.95 percent because -- and we swear to Christ, this is a real thing that he really said -- that is just "encouraging the behavior of purchasing food and discouraging the behavior of purchasing anything else."
Do you need a moment to scrape your jaw off the floor? Prolly you do, so go ahead, we'll wait ...
Okay, now just a few questions for state Sen. Melcher. First, exactly how many times were you dropped on your head as a baby? Second, WHAT?!?!? Third, no, seriously, dude, were you dropped on your head a lot? Because we do not understand how you could otherwise think that the people of your state are, like, holding back on their grocery shopping, but if the tax on food is lowered a whopping 1.35 percent, Kansasianites will gocrazywith the shopping and just start, like, buying up all kinds of groceries and forget to buy big screen TVs and used cars and discounted mattresses and whatever else state Sen. Melcher thinks they should buy instead.
We are not sure if we are confused, or state Sen. Melcher is confused, or both. Because we thought that lowering taxes was the Republican way and always A Good ThingTMand only Hitler + Satan + libruls like taxes and so it is always right to lower taxes, if not eliminate them entirely, because Ayn Rand Ronald Reagan Founding Fathers Argle Bargle Freedom.
But apparently, there is a little-known codicil in the Gospel of Grover Norquist, in which the Lord sayeth that thou shalt tax the shit out of food because otherwise it is "social engineering," and while it is perfectly reasonable and simplistical to tax food at a rate of 6.3 percent, to tax food at a rate of 4.95 percent would be confusing and oppressive and unfair and probably, let's face it, Just Like Hitler, because isn't everything?
“It seems to me it provides a complexity in the tax code that the retailers will have to deal with,” he explained, according to The Wichita Eagle
Retailers, you see, innately understand 6.3 percent, but if you reduce that by 1.35 percent, and carry the one and do some other math to it, all hell breaks loose and retailers have a devil of a time figuring out how much to make you pay for those Cheesy Poofs, so screw it, we should just leave the tax on groceries at its current rate to continue discouraging people from spending too much money on food, which isnot"social engineering" we guess?
Fuck, we are SO confused now about taxes and groceries and don't even know how this makes sense. But apparently, neither does state Sen. Melcher.
As others have mentioned, the real derp here is that KS taxes groceries at all.
No tax on grocery-like foodstuffs here in the tax-happy Impure State though, because It Would Just Be Wrong.
So Very, Very Wrong. What kind of people are they out there in Dorothyland?
Seems like it's got folks there who could use a brain AND a heart.
We don't tax food here in AZ. If we can figure it out, nobody has an excuse...