NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The effort to repeal Tennessee's Grocery Tax may not happen this year, or if it does, it may be considerably downsized.
A few months ago, House Majority Leader William Lamberth, and other Republicans, proposed getting rid of the 4% state sales tax on food and food ingredients. The legislation wouldn't impact the additional tax usually levied by local communities.
"The least we can do is try to take the state portion of the grocery tax to make it a little bit easier on my friends and neighbors," Lamberth told NewsChannel 5 late last year. "Everybody has to buy groceries, so if you can make groceries a little bit cheaper, that’s a good thing for Tennessee."
But the idea hit a major setback this week, when it wasn't included in Governor Bill Lee's official budget proposal. Thursday, the Speaker of the House sounded a little skeptical about it too.
"To say we’re going to repeal the whole grocery tax and we want to give someone a tax break for buying a Snickers bar over here or a frozen pizza, yea, I don’t foresee that," said Sexton, R-Crossville, during a news conference. "But if you want to do it on staples that people should be, that’s the staples of what’s defined, we can have that conversation."
Lamberth told reporters he's open to limiting the tax cut to the most essential items shoppers typically buy from grocery stores.
"Milk, eggs, bread, I mean, that’s a great place to start," said Lamberth, R-Portland. "I understand we can’t do it in one year, I know that’s a lot to take in one year, but we can try."
"Before you do that, you need to know what those numbers are and then you’ve got to get with the Senate to see how on board they are with whatever direction the House may want to go," Sexton added.
So what does the Senate think about the idea? Leaders haven't ruled it out completely, but they did indicate this week that state money is a little tight this year to give it serious consideration.
Democrats condemned that line of thinking. "You ever notice how they start thinking about how we don’t actually have enough resources, whenever there’s a tax cut that might benefit a lot of people?" asked Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, during a Democratic press availability.
Yarbro and Rep. John Ray Clemmons, another Nashville Democrat, touted their bill to cut the grocery tax and replace it with a new tax on corporations. But given the Republican supermajority in both chambers that idea likely won't garner enough votes either.
Lamberth lambasted the Democratic version of the bill. "What I disagree with is the socialist approach to this where you have to cut taxes over here and raise them over here, which is what Democrats want to do," he said. "That’s just robbing Peter to pay Paul. That’s a ridiculous assertion."
Previous estimates suggest cutting the Tennessee food and food ingredients tax would cut state revenue by around $750 million each year.
Do you have more information about this story? You can email me at Chris.Davis@NewsChannel5.com.
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