Tennessee’s Grocery Tax Debate Has Reached The French Toast Stage

Tennessee’s House speaker has proposed cutting the sales tax on milk, eggs and bread. At last, an affordability policy calibrated to the precise needs of French toast. If dinner has ambitions beyond breakfast, it may have to retain counsel.

The state adds a 4% tax to groceries. Jack Johnson, the Republican caucus’s nominee for the next Senate speaker, acknowledges the affordability problem but hasn’t endorsed a grocery-tax cut. He favors incremental improvements. Apparently the increment might be one ingredient at a time. Eat carefully; you could stray outside the legislative vision.

Cameron Sexton’s milk-eggs-bread bill is only a proposal and may change. A broader repeal isn’t some alien idea beamed into Nashville by radical soup enthusiasts, either. Republicans and Democrats have tried grocery-tax reductions before. The Tennessee Lookout reports that those efforts didn’t advance.

Why does a state need to conduct a tasting flight of affordability?

Imagine applying this principle to a shopping list. Bread qualifies. Eggs qualify. Tomatoes? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Pasta? The senator understands your concern, but we must respect the limits of state government. The state has enough power to tax spaghetti; relieving it is apparently an expedition beyond the known universe.

There is a real budget cost: roughly $800 million for repealing the state share, more if local taxes go too. A projected surplus is not a permanent fountain of money. Fine. Debate a durable replacement. Democrats previously proposed a corporate minimum tax to fund repeal. Other ideas can compete with it. This is a legislature; supposedly it has more settings than yes, no and toast.

Johnson is not yet installed as speaker and has not finally rejected a cut. There is room to make a decision. That is rather the point of the job.

For now, Tennessee has a proposal that recognizes the financial hardship of breakfast’s most coordinated ingredients. The rest of the grocery cart will await the next round of culinary diplomacy.

Try not to get hungry between sessions.