Should food and clothing be exempt from sales tax?

[MODU]

I would abolish the sales tax entirely and replace it with income taxes. 

That just hurts the poor even more. 

[WalterMitty]

opebo, why dont you use your capital to provide stipends to some poor folks.

i know you are a big believer in redistribution.  wink wink

[A18]

Food? Yes. Clothing? No.

Agreed. And to some extent, not all food should be tax exempt. Milk should be tax exempt, but not soda. Sliced bread should be, but not Italian bread sticks. Etc....

That makes it complicated. How are you going to determine whether each and every item is taxable or not?

[John Dibble]

Food? Yes. Clothing? No.

Agreed. And to some extent, not all food should be tax exempt. Milk should be tax exempt, but not soda. Sliced bread should be, but not Italian bread sticks. Etc....

That makes it complicated. How are you going to determine whether each and every item is taxable or not?

A massive, inefficient, and wasteful beauracracy of course. I'd think that would be obvious.

[Virginian87]

Food: Yes
Clothing: Yes, assuming it is under $100

As JJ said, most necessary clothing is under $100.  Beyond the realm of necessity, the sales tax should apply.

[MODU]

Food? Yes. Clothing? No.

Agreed. And to some extent, not all food should be tax exempt. Milk should be tax exempt, but not soda. Sliced bread should be, but not Italian bread sticks. Etc....

That makes it complicated. How are you going to determine whether each and every item is taxable or not?

As Dibble said, it's complicated (and no, I'm not for this system).  It can be done through a national UPC system (not hard to assign products various coding when being labelled), but you would have to ensure that each store has up-to-date tax information.  Additionally, your mom and pop shops which do everything by hand would have to know what gets taxed and what doesn't get taxed.  

But, if we were to go to a system of not taxing food to protect the poor, I don't think the poor are going to be buying the most expensive Grade A steak around because it's tax exempt.  They are going to buy what they can afford and need to survive.  So, only the basics like bread, eggs, milk, etc would need to be tax exempt while the rest carries a tax so the other 90% of society gets their fair hit at the registers.