Madam President, unless we are all living under a rock, or inside the Lansing bubble, you know that food prices have skyrocketed in the last couple years. Inflation has made putting food on the kitchen table more expensive than it has been in decades. And yet my colleagues across the aisle think now is a good time to make food more expensive.
Madam President, I owned a small business for almost 25 years. Alongside a lot of food, I sold a lot of beverages—adult beverages, soda pops, a lot of stuff—and I can tell you that I couldn’t afford to hire an accountant right now to tell me what is taxable and what is not taxable. Is it sweet tea? Is it unsweetened tea? Is it a bag of Better Made potato chips from Detroit? Or do I tax the bag of M&Ms made in Tennessee?
These bills are unnecessarily complicated, confusing, contradictory, convoluted, and costly, but they lack one thing Madam President—common sense. I ask for a “no” vote.
Senator McBroom’s statement, in which Senators Daley, Lindsey, Victory and Theis concurred, is as follows:
The sorry history of this Department of Treasury and their odd way of suddenly finding new interpretations of laws only to then have them devolve into mass chaos is well-documented, between their history of suddenly deciding that milk bulk tanks were actually personal property instead of physical property, or their determination of whether the ten-cent deposit should be put on frozen slush mix for margaritas, why is our Department of Treasury constantly digging into these tax laws and creating strange novel interpretations that harass our residents and create mass confusion?
Here we have today, another amazing example of this where now we can’t decide whether something should be taxed or not depending on whether they handed a fork to you or not. Whether they heated it up too long or not enough. We’re literally having to write laws and I can already see problems with the new law because it says they give you a fork or hand it to you, but is it given when it’s left on the counter? What if it’s slid across the counter? Do you have to touch hands? Do we have to make physical contact? Are rinseable spoons utensils or not? I don’t know, because we obviously have to spell it all out for Treasury or they’ll just make the next thing up to bilk our citizens of more dollars. Are nachos and cheese dip a heated thing, or is the cheese dip a condiment? And since the nachos aren’t heated but the cheese dip is—but it’s a condiment—these aren’t taxable. We don’t know anymore. We’ll have to let Treasury figure it out, and they’ll have ten different interpretations from every different Treasury official who goes out there, and then decide which one can get them the most money to somehow bolster us through the next budget crisis.
This bill started with a bad premise, it continues a bad premise, and it doesn’t get to the heart of the issue which is a department that is out of control and often to the boondocks persecuting our citizens. I ask for a “no” vote. Send this back to the drawing board, and send Treasury a message to get off their butts and just interpret the law plainly instead of making all of this drama we don’t need.
The following bill was read a third time:
House Bill No. 4378, entitled
A bill to amend 1933 PA 167, entitled “General sales tax act,” by amending section 4g (MCL 205.54g), as amended by 2015 PA 171.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: