South Carolina consumers would pay more for food, water, electricity and prescriptions in exchange for a lower overall sales tax rate under a tax revision proposal given preliminary approval Wednesday.
And the proposed sales tax increases don’t stop at necessities. The state’s Tax Realignment Commission recommends that the state for the first time charge sales taxes on digital purchases from online stores, such as iTunes and Amazon.com, and pay more to buy a car as part of a massive makeover of the way the state collects taxes.
Of course no one thinks we should cut spending, especially for social services to illegals. Besides that, we decided as a state a few years ago it was unconscionable to charge sales tax on food. Our conscience has a very short memory. Our problem is South Carolina is that when we have good times the legislature spends every nickle, and never saves anything for the lean times. For instance, if the brunt of the tabacco settlement had been saved, we would be OK now.
South Carolina should look at Rhode Island and other states that have taxed online purchases – they ended up losing money.
Taxing food and prescriptions? OUCH! I hate our sales tax in Texas — it’s over 8 percent. The tax on hotel rooms is 15 percent! But at least they don’t tax food and prescriptions. Taxing necessities just isn’t right, IMO, and it really hurts the poor! (Well, at least, it hurts the poor who don’t have Lonestar Cards.)
But wait, we were promised that non prepared food would be taxed at a much lower rate if we add a penny (actually a 20% increase). Now we have tough economic times, people are spending less on goods and services, so lets renegotiate to get back our tax on necessities. Please SC, stop trying to fix it, everytime you do, it costs more.