Call Your State Senators to Oppose Food Tax

It seems the idea of reimposing a gross receipts tax on groceries comes up every legislative session, and this year is no different. New Mexico Voices for Children and other organizations sounded the alarm about this possibility before the session began, and sure enough the food tax seems to have found its way into tax reform proposals in the State Senate. Santa Fe-based Think New Mexico offers an update and tells us why this regressive tax is a bad idea.

Food Tax: Here We Go Again!

With over $1 billion in new revenue and polls showing that 87% of New Mexicans oppose the food tax, we were hoping that the legislature wouldn't try to bring back a regressive tax on groceries this session.

Unfortunately, we were wrong.

Last Thursday, the final day for bill introductions, not one but two bills were introduced to reimpose the food tax: Senate Bill 584, sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chair John Arthur Smith and the ranking Republican on the committee, Senator Steve Neville, and Senate Bill 585, sponsored by Senator Smith and Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle. (The food tax is also included in Senate Bill 421.)

The New Mexican and Albuquerque Journal newspapers published excellent front page articles this morning detailing the negative impact this regressive tax would have on New Mexico families.

Please email your state senator and the governor and urge them to oppose these and any other bills that bring back the regressive food tax!

New Mexico's tax system is badly in need of reform. It is undermined by more than 300 loopholes, exemptions, and deductions for a grab bag of interests ranging from fuel for space vehicles to professional boxing matches to sales of recreational vehicles. Yet rather than closing special interest loopholes, these bills go after the food tax exemption, the one exemption that benefits hundreds of thousands of low and middle income New Mexico families and that enjoys wide public support.

One of the core purposes of tax reform is to make New Mexico's tax system less idiosyncratic and more like the tax structures of other states. Two-thirds of the states (34) do not impose a sales tax on groceries. This includes our neighbors in Arizona, Colorado, and Texas.

A 2017 study by Ernst & Young that was commissioned by the New Mexico legislature found that the food tax would hit low-income New Mexicans three times harder than wealthier residents, since poorer families spend a higher percentage of their incomes on food.

The good news is that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Speaker Brian Egolf have both taken strong stands against reimposing the food tax. However, we want to make sure that these bills don't gain any traction in the Senate, where powerful senators are pushing them.

Contact your state senator to urge him/her take the food tax off the table once and for all!