Portland voters impose a 1% “clean energy” tax on large and big-box businesses.
And are then outraged that those businesses pass the costs on to customers.
Emphasis added:
Terry Wiesner stared down at his Safeway grocery store receipt in confusion in mid-September after he noticed being charged an extra 3 cents for buying a package of $2.99 napkins. The 3 cent charge was listed as a tax.
He called over a store attendant while still in the self-checkout line at the Southeast Woodstock Boulevard branch and asked about the charge. The worker pointed to a laminated sign nearby.
Portland instituted a voter-approved clean energy surcharge in January, imposing a 1 percent tax on paper products, wine, beer, household items and other products, the sign said. The surcharge began appearing on Safeway customers’ receipts on Sept. 9 and people should contact the City of Portland if they had any concerns, according to the notice.
“I didn’t remember voting for any kind of tax,” said Wiesner, 74. “I later learned that this was meant to be a tax on businesses, not the people. Frankly, it just made me angry. It wasn’t about the 3 cents, it’s about the spirit of this charge and how it’d been passed off to me.”
To be fair, it’s entirely possible this has been passed off as something that’d “just affect business”; Portland, like Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Duluth and now Rochester, is run by people who’ve never worked outside public employment, non-profits or academia.
Exactly. That is why it makes me SO MAD when I am charged sales tax at the store or those silly taxes whenever I stay at a hotel. Come to think of it, why does income tax come out of MY pocket, instead of my employer’s?
Though, I got to say, I understand why businesses try to get away with passing on taxes to the consumer.. It cuts into their profits, which makes it harder to invest in new stuff and hire more people.
SAY!! I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we only collect taxes from government? That way people and businesses won’t get squeezed?
You think that’s a crazy idea? How else are we going to pay off our $20 trillion in federal debt (not to mention state and city debt)? I think it is called “printing money”.
Yup! That DemonRAT practice and rhetoric of “tax the rich” policy, will come back to haunt the useful idiots that believe in their “betters”.
He’s getting what he voted for, nice and hard.
Where does he think that businesses get their money? Mr. Weisner should be careful. He is endangering his status as a useful idiot.
Anyone wonder how long this will take Minneapolis city council to implement?
It seems to me that all this could be avoided if the city council in Portland simply forbade businesses from telling customers about the 3 cent charge being listed as a tax. I’m sure Mr. Weisner would be most happy to return to his status as a useful *and* ignorant idiot.
Minnesota residents may recall the so-called “provider tax” on medical charges that has been in force since 1992. Originally 2%, it just got reduced to 1.8%. It’s not really a tax on providers, because it’s added to medical bills. Don’t believe what you might hear on MPR, that hospitals and clinics like it. We fought tooth and nail against it when it was proposed. Health plans like it because it’s fiendishly difficult for providers to calculate and extract from the purses of health insurance companies with all the discounts in insurance and provider contracts. Nobody pays the sticker price except the uninsured. The doctors and clinics have to pay the tax to the state, with huge penalties for being wrong. If people paid for medical care like anything else, no problem. Apparently there’s a big surplus now, but don’t expect the state to return it. Never will happen.
The invisible hand bitch slaps the clueless again.
I think jdm has the right of it. That reprobate isn’t pissed because the store passed a tax on to him; even reprobates know how the game is played. He’s pissed because the store is rubbing his nose in his own scat.
Before we’re done, we’ll be using their noses to shovel out the stables their leaders have made of our country.
It’s fun to remember that even Wellstone knew that business do not, ultimately, pay taxes, but rather consumers pay them. Come to think of it, we might be able to get a lot of gain out of reminding people of this, and then we could quit messing around with trying to impose taxes on “someone else”, making our government a lot more efficient.
I know, I know. Dream on. But a boy can dream. :^)