Michigan Bottled Water Tax to Fund Education: Unjustified, Unwise, Unconstitutional

December 16th, 2009 Tax Foundation - Tax Foundation's "Tax Policy Blog"

From the Detroit Free Press:

Lt. Governor John Cherry this afternoon proposed using Michigan’s water supply to fund its education system.[...]

By charging water bottlers 10 cents on each bottle of water they pull from Michigan waterways, the state could raise $118 million a year, Cherry said. That would cover the $100 million needed for the Promise Scholarship and leave another $18 million for wetlands protection, he said.

Unjustified. What logic is there to hitting bottled water with a special tax to fund education? It sounds like just a revenue grab with a random product being chosen to take the hit. The rhetoric about taxing companies shouldn’t divert people’s attention from the fact that consumers will be the ones paying this tax in the end.

Unwise. Michigan isn’t exactly swimming in tax-paying business activity nowadays, so the idea of taxing a product only if it is made in Michigan is short-sighted. Does Lt. Gov. Cherry not realize that by making Michigan products more expensive with a rather hefty tax, they’ll be pushed out of the market by non-Michigan products? Nestle Waters put out a press release noting that they employ a few hundred people at its water bottling plant in Michigan, with a $2 million tax bill.

Unconstitutional. Article IX of the Michigan Constitution prohibits imposing sales taxes on food products. Perhaps there is an argument about whether bottled water is a food product (the FDA says it is) and whether a tax on someone who makes food is a tax on food, but Michigan could expect extended litigation on this.

Read the original post from the Tax Foundation


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  • dontpaytaxes
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    To: Congress, the House and the President

    Re: Taxes

    Sign this petition at:

    http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/irefusetopay/


    Over the past year, you’ve ignored the will of the people in many respects. You’ve pushed a monstrosity of a health care bill on us, which we’ve begged and pleaded you stop pushing. You’ve ignored the welfare and security of the people’s ability to find work and instead tossed them enough crumbs to get by through the intermittent passage of a UI bill that barely feeds a family of two, depending on where you live. You’ve pushed every possible anti-small business legislation in an order to crush the middle class and rich to help even out the dire needs of the poor. This is not America. This is class warfare, this is redistribution of wealth, this is tyranny and this is soon to be anarchy. In order to prevent anarchy, in order to prevent the violence and uprisings which we all feel are on the brink of happening, WE THE PEOPLE would like to present you with an alternative. The outcome of this alternative would end up keeping the peace, something we all want, something that is necessary to a civil society. This alternative would also help CONTROL the fanatical and power hungry desires of an out of control government. What is the alternative? Paying taxes. Or not paying taxes!

    The government needs OUR tax revenue for the overall general welfare of the country, which includes the upkeep of America’s infrastructure as well as the funding of our military, something we can all agree brings every man, woman and child protection. The problem that we all understand is that once this health care bill/education passes, among other anti-business bills such as cap and trade, the unionization of all businesses and other atrocious anti-business bills, NO AMOUNT of tax revenue will be enough to feed this out of control beast riddled with social program after social program. Just as Medicare costs were thought to be in the millions when the program first surfaced in the 60’s, in only a few short years we learned that the costs were potentially back bone breaking and today we have somewhere between 50 to 100 trillion in unfunded Medicare and social security liabilities. If it weren’t for the full faith and backing of the Chinese, Japanese and other countries who buy our treasuries and if weren’t for the productivity of the US worker whose pay check the government receives FICA taxes from, we’d had found ourselves in third world economic status in no time. But now that the government is taking away our economic freedoms, our ability to push this country forward without being swamped by social programs that tax us to death, now that the country is on the verge of losing its triple A bond rating, the possibility that those countries stop funding our liabilities is great. The fact that the US economy will be burdened by these bills and thus slow even more is no secret. And these problems equate to the death of the United States. It also means that no amount of tax revenue will keep our head above water and paying even a dollar in taxes will be a dollar wasted.

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    So we now present you with two options. The first, continue pushing through your despotic nonsense and chance losing the tax revenue of millions and millions of tax paying citizens. The second, come back to the center and start governing how WE THE PEOPLE want you to govern. I can assure you that should you choose the latter, the country will continue as it has for the past couple of hundred years but should you choose the former, you’re essentially risking civil unrest throughout the country, your political careers and potentially the life of this country. So I leave you with this… The choice is yours…. Choose wisely.

    Truly and Sincerely,

    The People of the United States

    If you would like to sign but don’t want to sign your own name, then sign “Susan B. Anthony” or “John Adams”. If an email is asked for, use ‘[email protected]’ or any other fake email. The point is to get as many signatures as possible. Thank you for your political patronage AND please, pass this around to anyone you think would be interested in signing it. Thank you!

    Sign this petition at:

    http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/irefusetopay/
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