ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 10, 1996 TAG: 9606100022
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
WHILE SERVING as lieutenant governor, Democrat Doug Wilder made repeal of the sales tax on nonprescription drugs his cause celebre. In 1990, shortly after his inauguration as governor, the General Assembly passed the repeal.
And so Wilder and legislators, Democrat and Republican, took a bow and congratulated themselves for - drum roll! - providing tax relief for Virginia's low-income residents.
Six years later, newcomers to Virginia may wonder why shoppers still pay the sales tax on over-the-counter drugs.
Sillies! The repeal is on the books, but year after year after year, lawmakers have deferred the date that it is to go into effect.
With this legislative legerdemain, through good as well as tough fiscal times, the assembly perhaps has hoped that some Virginians have forgotten about the tax, as they might various pills and medications bought years ago and left sitting in the back of medicine cabinets. The assembly may even have hoped it would continue to enjoy political credit for voting to repeal the tax.
In any case, legislators have been happy to continue spending the estimated $30 million a year in revenue generated by the tax.
Salem Del. Morgan Griffith, a Republican, has recently suggested that the assembly get off the dime on this issue. The assembly, he says, can't afford to repeal the sales tax on food, which would provide significant tax relief, especially for low-income Virginians. But it should show that it cares by stopping collection of the tax on cough drops and such.
Griffith is right to suggest that the assembly's six years of disingenuous dithering is inexcusable. In truth, though, repeal of the drug tax was always a hollow political gesture.
Even hard-core hypochondriacs don't spend so much on over-the-counter remedies that they would get noticeable tax relief. The annual savings for most Virginians would be about $6, tops.
Even Wilder acknowledged that the drug-tax repeal was mostly a symbolic substitute for genuine tax relief that would come from eliminating the inclusion of food under the sales tax - a tax that falls most onerously on the working poor. Repeal of the drug tax, it's fair to say, was always intended more as political salve for the active voting bloc of middle-class senior citizens than as tax relief for low-income families.
Griffith's intention in bringing up the sales tax on medicine is fine. But he is wrong to dismiss the possibility of purging the food tax. Legislators could afford to repeal this shamefully regressive tax if they had the courage to pass or adjust other taxes to make up the revenue difference.
Drug-tax repeal was in 1990, and still is, quack tax relief. It is well to bring attention to the lawmakers' cynical deferral of even this ostensible tax break, grandly enacted six years ago. But let's not let them wield it again to avoid the far more important issue of eliminating the sales tax on food.
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